ds involuntarily clenched themselves at her side; her lips moved
with a bitter smile; then, without addressing another word to the Hun,
she turned, and softly and stealthily quitted the room.

The instant she was gone, a sudden change arose in the barbarian's
manner. He started from his seat, a scowl of savage hatred and triumph
appeared on his shaggy brows, and he paced to and fro through the
chamber like a wild beast in his cage. 'I shall tear him from the
pinnacle of his power at last!' he whispered fiercely to himself. 'For
what I have told her this night, his kinswoman will hate him--I knew it
while she spoke! For his desertion of his post, Alaric may dishonour
him, may banish him, may hang him! His fate is at my mercy; I shall
rid myself nobly of him and his command! More than all the rest of his
nation I loathe this Goth! I will be by when they drag him to the
tree, and taunt him with his shame, as he has taunted me with my
deformity.' Here he paused to laugh in complacent approval of his
project, quickening his steps and hugging himself joyfully in the
barbarous exhilaration of his triumph.

His secret meditations had thus occupied him for some time longer, when
the sound of a footstep was audible outside the door. He recognised it
instantly, and called softly to the person without to approach. At the
signal of his voice a man entered--less athletic in build, but in
deformity the very counterpart of himself. The following discourse was
then immediately held between the two Huns, the new-comer beginning it
thus:--

'Have you tracked him to the door?'

'To the very threshold.'

'Then his downfall is assured! I have seen Alaric.'

'We shall trample him under our feet!--this boy, who has been set over
us that are his elders, because he is a Goth and we are Huns! But what
of Alaric? How did you gain his ear?'

'The Goths round his tent scoffed at me as a savage, and swore that I
was begotten between a demon and a witch. But I remembered the time
when these boasters fled from their settlements; when our tribes
mounted their black steeds and hunted them like beasts! Aha, their
very lips were pale with fear in those days.'

'Speak of Alaric--our time is short,' interrupted the other fiercely.

'I answered not a word to their taunts,' resumed his companion, 'but I
called out loudly that I was a Gothic ally, that I brought messages to
Alaric, and that I had the privilege of audience like the rest