alkol!' cried
Aliande, pressing the old woman's hand to her lips with filial love.
'Saved by the noblest, bravest and handsomest youths....'

'Silence, children!' said the sorceress, interrupting them. 'My true
mirror has already told me all, and more perhaps than you will be
willing to confess.'

Blushing and confused, the maidens cast their sparkling eyes upon the
ground.

'Quickly, ah too quickly, has love for your deliverers found its way to
your young hearts. Faithfully until now have I guarded you against this
dangerous passion; but the moment in which the traitor Rasalkol
succeeded in abducting you from this protecting cavern, my power over
you ceased. The reprobate's hellish plan of destroying both you and me
has indeed failed; but you may yet one day wish that you had bled under
his dagger;--for the sorrows of unrequited love cut more keenly into
weak woman's heart than a thousand daggers.'

'You do not know our knights,' interposed Aliande in a scarcely audible
murmur.

'I know them to be men. As the wolf resembles the hyena, and both of
these the jackal, so also do the whole profligate sex resemble each
other,--differing only in their outward appearance and capacity for
seizing their prey. The inexperienced eyes of the harmless doe are
easily fascinated by the beautiful stripes of the blood-thirsty tiger!'

Tears trickled down the maidens' cheeks, at this reproof.

'I love you my children,' continued Hiorba in a tenderer tone. 'You are
the grand-children of my good niece, whom I buried on my hundredth
birth day. Willingly would I have rendered you happy, which you can
only be in an unmarried state; but you are in love, and all my warnings
are spoken to the winds. For once, however, yield to a mother's
anxiety: Let me _prove_ the men of your choice.'

'Has not their battle with Rasalkol and his Moors already proved them
sufficiently?' asked Aliande.

'Their knightly courage,--but not their hearts.'

'If all men were proved in advance,' answered Daura, with a faint
smile, 'who would come unscathed from the furnace?'

'Your questions contain a significant denial of my request,' answered
Hiorba. 'Since you have seen these strangers I have no longer any
influence over your hearts. Consider well my last warning.'

She again raised her wand to the mirror and the field of battle again
presented itself. Aliande saw the fluttering veil, and the furious
contention of the knights.

'For God's sake, Hiorb