eme east,
dawn was glimmering; for more than two, almost three hours of the
September night had passed in the battle around the camp since the
criers had announced the second hour after twelve.

CHAPTER LIII.

Meanwhile Bissula had recovered consciousness. The loud summons of the
tubas, giving the signal for the sally of the Romans, had roused her.
Raising herself in her hiding-place behind the beams and planks which,
piled one above another to the height of a man, completely concealed
her, she peered through the openings between them. Her heart throbbed
with joy as she saw the lake gate, hitherto so impenetrably and
inexorably closed against her, now standing wide open. Cautiously,
crouching like a kitten that tries to escape the hand outstretched to
seize it, she glided to the western corner of her hiding-place and
looked out at the gate.

Yet, ardently as she longed for liberty, and familiar as was the
fearless daughter of the forest by the lake with all the perils and
horrors of the primeval woods and the waves, she was but a girl, and
had never before witnessed the terrors of murderous battles. But now
Bissula saw the bloody scenes, of which, hitherto, she had only heard
from her uncle or some bard at a feast celebrating a victory: she saw,
and trembled.

By the light of the two wings of the gate, now blazing furiously, the
torches of the Romans, and the bundles of faggots hurled among the
tents by the Alemanni, she saw close at hand, beyond the ditch, the
bloody, murderous conflict. She saw the meeting between the Romans, as
they burst from the camp, and the assailing bands of her own people;
saw things which sent a thrill of horror through every vein.

Trembling in every limb she sank down, as though paralyzed, on a pile
of lumber behind her, and gazed with dilated eyes, through the gate at
the terrible spectacle, from which, with all its horrors, she could not
avert her gaze, or even lower her eyelids. Suddenly she saw Saturninus,
then he vanished, hidden by his Illyrians, then reappeared, far in the
van. She recognized the King of the Ebergau,--he had given her a clasp
at the last spring festival,--then she saw him fall backward without
rising again. The little figure at his side, with fair curls floating
around his uncovered head, was Sippilo. So the plunge from the wall had
not injured him.

Then a gigantic Illyrian, swinging a blazing torch,--a terrible
weapon,--appro