firebrand, confusion rose behind him; a din
of exclamations loosed on the air and the clangor of weapons caught down
from the wall. Through it, the Etheling's voice sounded strongly. "To
the palisade, all of you! They may not wait till morning. To the forest
side; and keep them from it as you would keep off death!" He bent and
shook the crouching page. "My armor, boy! How! Would you have me read
treason in your sluggishness? My armor!"

The page started up, but it was only to stare past him and fling out his
hand toward a window, where a bright light had suddenly shot athwart the
darkness: "Lord, they have set fire to something!"

The voice of old Morcard rose shrill: "To the storehouses! Save the
grain!"

There was a wild rush for the door; but on the threshold they were met
by the shouts of watchmen hurrying from the parapets.

"Lord, the court is swarming with them!"... "They have cut through
the palisade on the forest side!"... "They had brush laid ready--"...
"Waited only for him--"... "Holy saints, what is the meaning of
that?"... "Something else has taken!"

From the stairway above them came a piercing cry: "The storehouses!
They have fired them from inside! The lead is melting like ice!"... "The
grain!"... "The grain!"

In their midst the young lord stood in helpless fury; and the hand he
had grasped around his sword-hilt gripped it so hard that blood started
under each nail. But his page bent and kissed the clenched fist with a
cry of fierce exulting.

"You will never get out to find your lily-fair lady. You will never have
a lady wife, lord! We shall die together."

Chapter XIV. How The Fates Cheated Randalin

There is a mingling of affection
Where one can tell
Another all his mind.
Ha'vama'l.

After that night the deep-set windows of Ivarsdale looked out upon some
grim sights. The first morning it was a skirmish in the meadow beyond
the foot-bridge, when the three-score farmer-soldiers came loyally to
their leader's aid. Though Kendred of Hazelford marched bravely at their
head, they were practically uncaptained; with any kind of weapon in
their hands and no kind of armor over their home-spun. What chance had
they against sixty picked warriors, led by the fiercest chief of a race
of chieftains? They met, and there was a moment of clash and of clangor,
a moment of awful commotion; and when the whirling dust-clouds settled,
the only homespun that was moving was that whi