Upstairs in the court-yard, a wild shouting was now heard. Some, who had searched the church, I had also lifted a grave-stone, from under which a bleached skull grinned at them, out of its dark cowl. This spectacle frightened even the Huns. Two of the gang went up to the belfry, the steeple of which was adorned with a gilt weathercock, according to custom. Whether they took it to be the protecting God of the monastery, or imagined it to be real gold, they climbed up the roof, and audaciously sitting there, tried to bring the cock down with their lances. But now a sudden giddiness came over them. One, let his raised arm sink;--a stagger,--a cry; and he fell down, quickly followed by the other. With broken necks they lay in the cloister-yard. "A bad omen," said Ellak to himself. The Huns uttered a dismal howl, but a few moments later, the accident was entirely forgotten. The sword had ravished so many of their companions from their side; so what mattered two more, or less? The bodies were carried into the cloister-garden. With the logs which Heribald had upset in the early morning, a funeral-pile was erected; the books which had been left in the libraries, were thrown down from the windows, and were made use of in filling up the gaps between the logs,--an excellent burning material! Ellak and Hornebog were walking together through the ranks. Squeezed in between the logs, a neatly written manuscript with shining golden initials, peeped out. Hornebog, drawing his sword, pierced the parchment with it, and presented it to his companion, stuck on the point of the blade. "What do these hooks and chickens' feet mean, Sir Brother?" asked he. Ellak took the manuscript, and glanced over some of its pages. He also knew Latin. "Western wisdom," replied he. "A man, named Boëthius, wrote it, and it contains many fine things about the comfort of Philosophy." "Phi--losophy," slowly repeated Hornebog, "what does that mean, Sir Brother?" "It does not mean a fair woman, nor yet firewater either," was Ellak's reply. "It will be difficult to describe it in the Hunnic language ... but if a man does not know wherefore he is in the world, and stands on his head to find out the reason, that is near about what they call Philosophy in these western lands. He, who comforted himself with it, in his tower at Pavia, was after all killed for it." ... "And that served him right!" exclaimed Hornebog. "He, who holds a sword in his hand, and feels a horse between his thighs, knows why he is in the world; and if we did not know the reason better than those, who smear such hooks on asses' skins, then _they_ would be on our heels at the Danube, and our horses would not drink their fill out of the Suabian sea." "Don't you think, that it is very lucky that such trash is made?" continued Ellak, throwing back the manuscript on to the funeral-pile. "Why so?" asked Hornebog.