two more of his countrymen, had been stationed as an
outpost.

"Do you hear the dogs?" asked Rignomer.

"I'm not deaf," growled Brinno,

"When they keep on incessantly, it means something!" the other
continued mysteriously.

"Of course it does. They are hungry. Or they have the little one's
she-bear at bay."

"She-bear? Nonsense! She's sleeping where others would like to sleep.
No, no! Dogs don't you know that?--can see spirits and hear gods. There
is something abroad. Between midnight and dawn the night huntsman rides
over the tree-tops. I thought just now that I heard a horse neigh above
me, beyond that distant hill--in the air."

"Oh, pshaw! I never saw a horse fly yet!"

"But _He_ flies on his eight-hoofed gray steed through the clouds and
over the wind-swept forests, when he drives the woman of the woods
before him. Hark, what was that? At the right!"

"The hoot of an owl! Very near us!"

"And there--one at the left."

"Hark," cried a third soldier, "didn't that sound like metal on
metal--the clanking of arms--close in front of us?"

"No," said the fourth, "but I hear the faint trampling of a horse's
hoofs. Hark! There are several. Now it comes again, nearer still! The
foe!"

"Yes, it is the foe!" said Rignomer, seizing the signal horn to raise
it to his lips--but he had no power to do so. Horror, paralyzing
terror, awe which shook every limb, seized upon the brave man. His hair
bristled; voice and hand refused their service. Rigid with fear, he
stared at the wooded height before and above him, which suddenly seemed
alive.

A warrior sprang from behind every tree; every bush; yet it was not
these hundreds of Alemanni that terrified the battle-tried Batavian,
but another spectacle. Sometimes in a full glare of light, sometimes
dimly seen by the flame of two blazing torches, swung in circles by two
horsemen riding at his right and left, a powerful figure of superhuman
stature on a grayish-white horse came dashing down from the height
toward him. White hair and a floating beard waved around a fierce but
majestic countenance, above which a bird-monster, whose like Rignomer
had never seen, seemed to flap its white wings threateningly against
the mercenary as the vision rushed onward in silence, a huge spear
thrust before him, a long dark cloak flowing back from his shoulders
like a cloud; then, when close at hand, the horseman shouted: "Odin!
Odin has you all!"

The German flung down spear and shiel