hinkable that the ring of steel surrounding him
could be broken by any mortal power; sooner or later it must contract
and crush him. Even the momentary vision of Ulick, stripped to the waist
and with a broad, red streak across his forehead, failed to arouse him.
He could think only of a thresher with his flail as Ulick, bludgeoning
right and left, won clear from the press of Stockader foes surrounding
him and rejoined his own ranks. A confused idea that he wanted to speak
to Ulick suddenly oppressed Constans; he half started to follow him.
Piers Minor, at his elbow, held him back and shouted a caution.

"Keep up your guard, man, or that big chap will have you yet! And let
them come to you--don't rush them!"

In a hand-to-hand encounter there can be but little opportunity for
strategy or leadership, except in the purely physical sense. Yet, on
either side, the men fought as though animated by a common instinct, the
Doomsmen striving to force the Stockaders back into the gateway passage,
and the latter endeavoring to cut their way bodily through the mass of
the defenders and so divide its strength. For a while the tide began to
run with the allies, and the Doomsmen were obliged to fall back slowly
towards the interior barricade on the east side of the square that
protected the women and children. Constans, panting from his exertions,
snatched at this moment of respite to regain his breath. A moment before
he had stumbled against a small keg that was rolling about under the
feet of the struggling men; this he up-ended and mounted for a better
look around.

It was true; the Doomsmen were really giving way, and the victory was
all but won. Yet not quite, for even as he gazed the onrushing line of
the triumphant Stockaders sagged backward at the centre, and the
Doomsman yell broke out. What was it? What had happened?

Emerging from the portal of the White Tower came half a dozen bearers
carrying between them a chair in which sat a man--an old man with a
shock of snow-white hair covering his massive head. And those shoulders
needed no identification from the familiar wolf-skin that lay across
them. This could be none other than Dom Gillian, Chief and Overlord of
the Doomsmen, Father of the Gray People. He wore no armor and carried no
shield, but his hand gripped a great war-mace studded with silver nails,
fit emblem of the authority supreme that its own weight had created.
But that had been full half a century ago.

The o