party numbered some ten or twelve. One moment before that woman's shriek he had looked disdainfully upon them, clothed as they were in their large dark serge of monkery; and he had felt even disinclined to touch them, such foul scorn had he learned to entertain for the effeminacy of the whole brotherhood.

But how his bright, blue Saxon eye glowed when that shriek reached him!

"To the rescue! To the rescue!" whispered the Graf to his attendants; and as he whispered thus his falchion leaped from its scabbard.

He uttered this challenge to his companions in a whisper merely. But for the soldierly injunctions of his brother it would have been a shout, not a whisper.

Rupert rushed forward. His attendants, however, though they burned to follow their young master, were arrested by the low voice of Essel.

"Our orders are simply to observe and to report," he said to them, as they, with drawn swords, were becoming furious in their anxiety to reach their leader.

Help! Help!" again screamed a maiden.

"Leave him-leave our dear young lord to achieve the rescue by himself. But move up, move up; though there is but little need: his good steel will soon become acquainted with those shaven crowns."

But while he was thus whispering, his eye faithfully followed his young charge, and his mind was ready, and his calculations accurate, for giving aid the moment it might be wanted.

"Der Teufel!" cried one of the men, "those priestwomen have swords, I see." And, reckless of the words of Essel, he rushed forward to his young lord's side.

Essel had seen this, as soon as had the man beside him. And as soon was he close behind Rupert, who, instead of meeting with an unarmed body of monks, found himself in the midst of well-accoutred mercenaries of the Cardinal.

But before Essel and the two other soldiers had been able to reach the spot, Rupert had been engaged in a serious and no bloodless fight, hand to hand, with two of the mercenaries. He had disabled one of them; the second, however, was pressing him sorely. Meanwhile the Cardinal, quickly recovering from his surprise, hurried onward the rest of his attendants with their burden.

"Help! Help!" again pierced the ear and heart of Rupert, although his attention was so fearfully engaged with his surviving combatant.

But no sooner did the latter perceive others to be approaching than he took to his heels and fled.

"Follow! follow! Conrad," exclaimed Rupert to the soldier that came up. And in spite of his loss of blood the gallant youth led the pursuit.

And considering the disproportion of the numbers, the renewed meeting would, most surely, have been fatal to the Germans, but for the following:

The Cardinal had bravely placed himself in the rear of his party, the nearest to his pursuers. Whatever were his crimes and follies, he was no craven; indeed,

VOL. II.

I

even if he had been, there was now such an allcommanding purpose (that of securing his possession of Bianca) within his bosom, that cowardice would have no voice. But guilty feelings confused his brain, and fool-hardily, though he was without a weapon, he thus exposed himself.

He turned round, so soon as he heard the approaching fleet footsteps. Never dreaming that he was unarmed, and wholly unsuspicious as to who he was, Rupert, with a rapidity that defied all resistance, cut him down.

Then ensued a tumult among the mercenaries—a tumult, not so much under the impulse of rage and revenge for their reverend master (for though they loved his gold, they saw through him and abhorred him), as of selfish, earnest eagerness to escape from a broil which they felt would be very perilous if his presence should be discovered.

They one and all laid down their captive and rushed to the fallen body of the Cardinal. Quick as light Rupert and his followers darted towards the lady and there stood on the defensive, while the mercenaries, well taught the necessity of silence, bore off the body of their master.

All this seemed strange to Rupert; for, when expecting some sudden onslaught, he saw them defile before him, bearing among them what seemed to be a corpse. Rupert looked at it. The cowl had fallen off. face was cadaverous, it is true, but the whole head was unstained with blood.

The

"Then I have not killed him," murmured Rupert in a tone which it would have been difficult to interpret into joy or disappointment.

"Thank God, my lord, you have not killed him!" returned Essel. "I know that face: he is the Cardinal himself. Had you killed him, short work would this blessed Government here make of all of us. Oh! my Lord Rupert, why have you neglected the orders of the Count?"

The Graf would have forgotten, in his anger at this rebuke, his love, his respect for the old Seneschal, had not both been arrested by another scene.

It was that of the Cardinal making a desperate effort and raising himself as they bore him past Bianca, who, disengaged from her captors, was standing erect.

Woman though she was, she was a soldier's daughter, and her heart, which had been quailing whilst she was a captive and was being borne she knew not whither, resumed its energy, now that she had regained the free air of heaven and found herself in the midst of flashing swords and with her deliverers.

She fearlessly returned the glance of the ghastlylooking Cardinal, as his mercenaries bore him off.

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Signora, there is a Nemesis!" hissed through the teeth of the wounded man.

"And there is a God, Lord Cardinal!" returned Bianca as sternly as her native gentleness would allow.

Rupert, meanwhile, though so excited both by his

maiden efforts in conflict and by this scene, was beginning to feel faint; and the vigilant eye of Essel had prompted him to place his arm beneath a shoulder of his young lord.

With a tremendous effort he shook off the proffered aid, yet thanked Essel.

"Command us, fair lady," prayed the young candidate for knighthood. "Whither may we have the high honour to escort you?"

"Whither? whither, do you ask me, good, brave, kind young lord? Whither? To the grave," returned the orphan, now at length yielding to a terrible reaction from the excitement of the day. "I know not whither you may bear me, save to the grave. There— there only, the wicked cease from troubling."

Her energy would, however, have soon returned to her, and this little burst of feminine weakness would have been soon redeemed by some act or word of selfasserting dignity, if there had not been a sudden interruption.

Whilst he was holding secret colloquy with Father Francis, news had reached Count Arensberg of all that was going forward. His first impulse was to rise and issue forth to the rescue. Shame, or rather that bitter, bitter sense of being suspected if not denounced by his heart's love, paralyzed him.

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go

"Father!" he exclaimed, in miserable anguish, I cannot. She would-I know her well-prefer death itself to receiving life and liberty from me. Safe she will be I am sure: else I know not my brother Rupert,