he will try the might of St. Quemdeusvult against the wild king, and
see if he can save the town from being sacked once more. So out he
comes--a bishop perhaps, with priests, monks, crucifixes, banners,
litanies. The wild king must come no further. That land belongs to
no mortal man, but to St. Quemdeusvult, martyred here by the heathen
five hundred years ago. Some old Kaiser of Rome, or it may be some
former Gothic king, gave that place to the saint for ever, and the
saint will avenge his rights. He is very merciful to those who duly
honour him: but very terrible in his wrath if he be aroused. Has
not the king heard how the Count of such a place, only forty years
before, would have carried off a maiden from St. Quemdeusvult's town;
and when the bishop withstood him, he answered that he cared no more
for the relics of the saint than for the relics of a dead ass, and so
took the maiden and went? But within a year and a day, he fell down
dead in his drink, and when they came to lay out the corpse, behold
the devils had carried it away, and put a dead ass in its place.

All which the bishop would fully believe. Why not? He had no
physical science to tell him that it was impossible. Morally, it was
in his eyes just, and therefore probable; while as for testimony, men
were content with very little in those days, simply because they
could get very little. News progressed slowly in countries desolate
and roadless, and grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, as it did in
the Highlands a century ago, as it did but lately in the Indian
Mutiny; till after a fact had taken ten years in crossing a few
mountains and forests, it had assumed proportions utterly fantastic
and gigantic.

So the wild king and his wild knights pause. They can face flesh and
blood: but who can face the quite infinite terrors of an unseen