Then began a fierce struggle, in which the soldier’s strength and military knowledge were well matched by the supple limbs and clear, cool eye of the forester. It was truly a conflict for life or death on which the calm moonbeams looked down that lovely spring night. Hither and thither went the combatants over the fallen trees and stones, and through the brushwood, the object of Bertrand being to get as far as possible from the brink of the fatal precipice. Sometimes one party gained a slight advantage, sometimes the other; but both were evidently becoming exhausted. It seemed an even chance whether the Lollard would succeed in his benevolent object of saving his comrade’s life from his own violent hands, or would be obliged to yield, in order to preserve his own. The struggle was carried on, however, in the utmost silence, neither caring to waste strength in outcries, so that the only sounds to be heard during the combat were the crackling of the branches, the trampling of feet, and the panting breath of the wrestlers. Just at the moment when Bertrand had the other in a position to give him a heavy fling on the grass, his foot slipped, and they rolled together to the ground; the forester’s head struck heavily, and he lay for a moment stunned. In that moment the soldier disengaged himself from Bertrand’s relaxed grasp, and, with a yell of triumph, sprang toward the pool. A few strides, and he was at the brink, parting the bushes with a trembling hand. The moon cast a shimmer of light on some inky-black water--a rush of a heavy body, a shriek, a plunge--and the smooth surface, broken into a thousand points of light, was settling itself once more into tranquillity. Just then there appeared another figure on the scene: a man was flinging himself from point to point down the steep descent Bertrand, who arrived at the spot only to find himself too late, watched him; but his head was so confused by his fall, that he could not have told whether it took hours or minutes for this unexpected actor in the scene to throw off his outer garment, plunge in the pool, and drag the drowning man to land. By that time he became roused enough to go to his aid, and the two bore the soldier up the bank, and seated him with his back against the trunk of a tree, the water dripping from his garments, and the scared, bewildered expression changing to the old look of dogged, sullen defiance, as his senses returned. When the forester found that the soldier was not injured by his cold bath, he turned to look at the man who had stepped in so opportunely to the rescue, and the sight did not at all delight him, for the tonsured head, the cowl, and the knotted-rope girdle all proclaimed him an individual whom a Lollard disliked especially to meet, namely, a Benedictine monk. Dick recognized him further, and springing up, flung himself at the stranger’s feet, his teeth chattering with cold and terror as he tried to speak.