MIDNIGHT--and intense frost! There they were--houseless and breadless--the two fugitives, in the heart of that beautiful forest which has rung to the horns of many a royal chase. The soldier, whose youth had been inured to hardships, and to the conquests which our mother-wit wrings from the stepdame Nature, had made a fire by the friction of two pieces of dry wood; such wood was hard to be found, for the snow whitened the level ground, and lay deep in the hollows; and when it was discovered, the fuel was slow to burn; however, the fire blazed red at last. On a little mound, shaded by a semicircle of huge trees, sat the Outlaws of Human Reason. They cowered over the blaze opposite to each other, and the glare crimsoned their features. And each in his heart longed to rid himself of his mad neighbour; and each felt the awe of solitude,--the dread of sleep beside a comrade whose soul had lost God's light! "Ho!" said the warrior, breaking a silence that had been long kept, "this is cold work at the best, and hunger pinches me; I almost regret the prison." "I do not feel the cold," said Cesarini, "and I do not care for hunger: I am revelling only in the sense of liberty!" "Try and sleep," quoth the soldier, with a coaxing and, sinister softness of voice; "we will take it by turns to watch." "I cannot sleep,--take you the first turn." "Hark ye, sir!" said the soldier sullenly; "I must not have my commands disputed; now we are free, we are no longer equal: I am heir to the crowns of France and Navarre. Sleep, I say!" "And what Prince or Potentate, King or Kaiser," cried Cesarini, catching the quick contagion of the fit that had seized his comrade, "can dictate to the monarch of Earth and Air, the Elements and the music-breathing Stars? I am Cesarini the Bard! and the huntsman Orion halts in his chase above to listen to my lyre! Be stilled, rude man!--thou scarest away the angels, whose breath even now was rushing through my hair!" "It is too horrible!" cried the grim man of blood, shivering; "my enemies are relentless, and give me a madman for a jailer!" "Ha! a madman!" exclaimed Cesarini, springing to his feet, and glaring at the soldier with eyes that caught and rivalled the blaze of the fire. "And who are you?--what devil from the deep hell, that art leagued with my persecutors against me?" With the instinct of his old calling and valour, the soldier also rose when he saw the movement of his companion; and his fierce features worked with rage and fear. "Avaunt!" said he, waving his arm; "we banish thee from our presence! This is our palace!--and our guards are at hand!" pointing to the still and skeleton trees that grouped round in ghastly bareness. "Begone!"