on the scaffolding all was a tumult of uproar and
confusion, shouting and gesticulation; only the King sat calm, sullen,
impassive. The Earl wheeled his horse and sat for a moment or two as
though to make quite sure that he knew the King's mind. The blow that
had been given was foul, unknightly, but the King gave no sign either of
acquiescence or rebuke; he had willed that Myles was to die.

Then the Earl turned again, and rode deliberately up to his prostrate
enemy.

When Myles opened his eyes after that moment of stunning silence, it was
to see the other looming above him on his war-horse, swinging his gisarm
for one last mortal blow--pitiless, merciless.

The sight of that looming peril brought back Myles's wandering senses
like a flash of lightning. He flung up his shield, and met the blow even
as it descended, turning it aside. It only protracted the end.

Once more the Earl of Alban raised the gisarm, swinging it twice around
his head before he struck. This time, though the shield glanced it, the
blow fell upon the shoulder-piece, biting through the steel plate and
leathern jack beneath even to the bone. Then Myles covered his head with
his shield as a last protecting chance for life.

For the third time the Earl swung the blade flashing, and then it fell,
straight and true, upon the defenceless body, just below the left arm,
biting deep through the armor plates. For an instant the blade stuck
fast, and that instant was Myles's salvation. Under the agony of the
blow he gave a muffled cry, and almost instinctively grasped the shaft
of the weapon with both hands. Had the Earl let go his end of the
weapon, he would have won the battle at his leisure and most easily; as
it was, he struggled violently to wrench the gisarm away from Myles. In
that short, fierce struggle Myles was dragged to his knees, and then,
still holding the weapon with one hand, he clutched the trappings of the
Earl's horse with the other. The next moment he was upon his feet. The
other struggled to thrust him away, but Myles, letting go the gisarm,
which he held with his left hand, clutched him tightly by the sword-belt
in the intense, vise-like grip of despair. In vain the Earl strove to
beat him loose with the shaft of the gisarm, in vain he spurred and
reared his horse to shake him off; Myles held him tight, in spite of all
his struggles.

He felt neither the streaming blood nor the throbbing agony of his
wounds; every faculty of soul, mi