n
prayer, though each movement meant a pang, and gave his soul to
Christ, his Saviour and his Captain. And so passed away the soul of a
mighty warrior and a stainless priest.

Thus was Roland alone amongst the dead when consciousness came back to
him. With feeble hands he unlaced his helmet and tended to himself as
best he might. And, as Turpin had done, so also did he painfully crawl
towards the stream. There he found Turpin, the horn Olifant by his
side, and knew that it was in trying to fetch him water that the brave
bishop had died, and for tenderness and pity the hero wept.

"Alas! brave priest, fair lord of noble birth,
Thy soul I give to the great King of Heaven!

* * * * *

May thy fair soul escape the pains of Hell,
And Paradise receive thee in its bowers!"

Then did Roland know that for him, also, there "was no other way but
death." With dragging steps he toiled uphill a little way, his good
sword Durendala in one hand, and in the other his horn Olifant. Under
a little clump of pines were some rough steps hewn in a boulder of
marble leading yet higher up the hill, and these Roland would have
climbed, but his throbbing heart could no more, and again he fell
swooning on the ground. A Saracen who, out of fear, had feigned death,
saw him lying there and crawled out of the covert where he lay
concealed.

"It is Roland, the nephew of the Emperor!" he joyously thought, and in
triumph he said to himself, "I shall bear his sword back with me!" But
as his Pagan hand touched the hilt of the sword and would have torn it
from Roland's dying grasp, the hero was aroused from his swoon. One
great stroke cleft the Saracen's skull and laid him dead at Roland's
feet. Then to Durendala Roland spoke:

"I surely die; but, ere I end,
Let me be sure that thou art ended too my friend!
For should a heathen grasp thee when I am clay,
My ghost would grieve full sore until the judgment day!"

More ghost than man he looked as with a mighty effort of will and of
body he struggled to his feet and smote with his blade the marble
boulder. Before the stroke the marble split asunder as though the
pick-axe of a miner had cloven it. On a rock of sardonyx he strove to
break it then, but Durendala remained unharmed. A third time he
strove, and struck a rock of blue marble with such force that the
sparks rushed out as from a blacksmith's anvil. Then he knew that it
was in vain, for Du