you
here."

"Had the Lady Margaret recovered from her fright and fatigue?" asked the
youth.

"With the exception of a slight cough, brought on, I suppose, by the
rain."

Gilbert's next question related to his paternal estate.

"The chapel stands uninjured," said Humbert.

"And the castle?"

"The blackened walls alone remain!"

"We shall be avenged!" cried the young knight, drawing a deep breath.
"How was the chapel preserved?"

"Numbers of women and children had fled there for protection, and our
good Father Herman, standing in the doorway, told the miscreants they
must pass over his body. He would have fallen a victim to his zeal, had
not the Duke Godfrey de Bouillon interposed and driven back his soldiers
with loud reproaches."

"Where is Herman now?"

"Among his poor flock, who have lost almost all--endeavoring to procure
them food and shelter, and exhorting them to patience and submission to
the will of God."

"How fared Stramen Castle?"

"Even worse than your own."

"And the church?" continued Gilbert.

"Was despoiled and fired."

At this instant the curtain of the tent was parted again, and Father
Omehr stood before them.

When informed of the fate of his church, the missionary calmly raised
his eyes to heaven and repeated, in a clear, steady voice, those sublime
words: "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the
name of the Lord!"

But when apprised of the position of his parishioners, who must
inevitably have perished from the oldest to the youngest, the old man
bent his head upon his breast, and, pressing his hands to his face, wept
bitterly. He soon recovered his habitual resignation, and then, turning
to Gilbert, said mournfully:

"Do you see, my son, that God is _beginning_ to punish our feud?"

Immediately after his victory, Rodolph despatched messengers to the Pope
to give him the intelligence, and implore him to recognize the king in
the victor.

We always approach with veneration and extreme diffidence the character
of this mighty man. It is difficult, indeed, to form an adequate idea of
his moral grandeur. The better you study his views, the more you are
astonished at his wisdom and fore-sight; the deeper your scrutiny of his
motives, the higher your respect for his sanctity. His was an age of
transition. The great question was still undecided: Shall liberty or
tyranny prevail--barbarism or civilization? This question depended upon
the answer to another: