me she looked fixedly and anxiously
upon the countenance of Hermanric, which was half averted from her, and
expressed a fierce and revengeful gloom that sat unnaturally on it
noble lineaments. Then turning from him, she buried her face in her
hands, and made no effort more to attract him to attention or incite
him to reply.

This solemn silence kept by the bereaved woman and the brooding man had
lasted but a few minutes, when a harsh, trembling voice was heard from
the top of the waggon, calling at intervals, 'Hermanric! Hermanric!'

At first the young man remained unmoved by those discordant and
repulsive tones. They repeated his name, however, so often and so
perseveringly, that he noticed them ere long; and rising suddenly, as
if impatient of the interruption, advanced towards the side of the
waggon from which the mysterious summons appeared to come.

As he looked up towards the vehicle the voice ceased, and he saw that
the old woman to whom he had confided the child was the person who had
called him so hurriedly but a few moments before. Her tottering body,
clothed in bear-skins, was bent forward over a large triangular shield
of polished brass, on which she leant her lank, shrivelled arms. Her
head shook with a tremulous, palsied action; a leer, half smile, half
grimace, distended her withered lips and lightened her sunken eyes.
Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her face livid with the reflection from
the weapon that was her support, and her figure scarcely human in the
rugged garments that encompassed its gaunt proportions, she seemed a
deformity set up by evil spirits to mock the majesty of the human
form--an embodied satire on all that is most deplorable in infirmity
and most disgusting in age.

The instant she discerned Hermanric, she stretched her body out still
farther over the shield; and pointing to the interior of the waggon,
muttered softly that one fearful and expressive word--dead!

Without waiting for any further explanation, the young Goth mounted the
vehicle, and gaining the old woman's side, saw stretched on her
collection of herbs--beautiful in the sublime and melancholy stillness
of death--the corpse of Goisvintha's last child.

'Is Hermanric wroth?' whined the hag, quailing before the steady,
rebuking glance of the young man. 'When I said that Brunechild was
greater than Hermanric, I lied. It is Hermanric that is most powerful!
See, the dressings were placed on the wounds; and, though