hostages is ordained. Speak but the word, and I can save thee even
yet!'

'I looked on the crest. It was bloody, and it was his! For an instant
my heart writhed within me as I thought on my warrior whom I had loved!
Then, as I heard the messenger of death retire, cursing, from his
lurking-place in the garden, I recollected that now my children had none
but their mother to defend them, and that peril was preparing for them
from the enemies of their race. Besides the little one in my arms, I
had two that were sleeping in the house. As I looked round, bewildered
and in despair, to see if a chance were left us to escape, there rang
through the evening stillness the sound of a trumpet, and the tramp of
armed men was audible in the street beneath. Then, from all quarters of
the town rose, as one sudden sound, the shrieks of women and the yells
of men. Already, as I rushed towards my children's beds, the fiends of
Rome had mounted the stairs, and waved in bloody triumph their reeking
swords! I gained the steps; and, as I looked up, they flung down at me
the body of my youngest child. O Hermanric! Hermanric! it was the most
beautiful and the most beloved! What the priests say that God should be
to us, that, the fairest one of my offspring, was to me! As I saw it
mutilated and dead--I, who but an hour before had hushed it on my bosom
to rest!--my courage forsook me, and when the murderers advanced on me I
staggered and fell. I felt the sword-point enter my neck; I saw the
dagger gleam over the child in my arms; I heard the death-shriek of the
last victim above; and then my senses failed me, and I could listen and
move no more!

'Long must I have lain motionless at the foot of those fatal stairs; for
when I awoke from my trance the noises in the city were hushed, and from
her place in the firmament the moon shone softly into the deserted