Like an image of stone, Heribald sat at his post, gazing undauntedly at the strange figures before him. As yet he had never passed a sleepless night, musing over the perfection of human beauty, but the faces which now met his view, struck him as being so very ugly, that he could not suppress a startled, "Have mercy upon us, oh Lord!" Partly bent, the strange guests were sitting in their saddles; their shrunk, meagre little bodies dressed in beasts' skins. From their square-shaped skulls, black, shaggy hair hung down in wild disorder; and their unshapely yellow faces, glistened as if they had been anointed with tallow. One of the foremost had enlarged his coarse-lipped mouth considerably, by a voluntary cut at the corners, and from their small, deep-set eyes they looked out suspiciously at the world. "To make a Hun, one need only give a square shape to a lump of clay, put on a smaller lump for a nose, and drive in the chin"--Heribald was just thinking, when they stood before him. He did not understand their hissing language, and smiled complacently, as if the whole gang did not regard him in the least. For a while they kept staring with unbounded astonishment, at this puzzling specimen of humanity,--as critics are apt to do at a new poet, of whom they do not as yet know, in what pigeonhole of ready made judgments they are to put him. At last one of them beheld the bald place on Heribald's pate, and pointing at it with his sabre,--upon which the others raised a hoarse laugh,--he seized his bow and arrow to aim at the monk. But now Heribald's patience had come to an end, and a feeling of Allemannic pride coming over him as he confronted this rabble, he jumped up calling out: "By the tonsure of St. Benedict, the crown of my head shall not be mocked at, by any heathenish dog!" He had seized the reins of one of the foremost riders, and snatching away his sabre, was just going to assume an aggressive attitude, when quicker than lightning, one of the Huns threw a noose over his head and pulled him down. Then they tied his hands to his back, and were already raising their death-bringing arms, when a distant tramping was heard, like the approach of a mighty army. This occurrence for the moment completely drew off their attention from the idiot. They threw him like a sack against his oak-trunk, and quickly galloped back to the shore. The whole body of the Hunnic legion had now arrived on the opposite shore. The vanguard, by a shrill whistle, gave the signal that all was safe. At one of the extremities of the island, overgrown with reeds, they had spied a ford, which could be crossed on horseback with dry feet. This they showed to their friends, who now swarmed over like wild bees; many hundred horsemen. Their united forces had availed nothing against the walls of Augsburg and the Bishop's prayers; so, divided into several troops, they now ravaged the land. Their faces, figures and manner of sitting on horseback were all alike,