The eye of the venerable accuser, regarded the face of the speaker with a sad and touching solemnity; but at this moment, the little girl who had before accompanied him, was conducted into the foreground by the Archbishop. She bore in her hand a sarbacane,—seemingly of brass, long and narrow like a wand, and crowned, at the extremity, by a small globe or bulb of the same material. The length of this instrument was fully six feet or more. The old man took it into his hands, and having unscrewed a part of the bulb—which seemed a mere sheathing of brass, he discovered beneath it another globe, similar, in shape and size, to that which had been removed; but the inner bulb was manufactured of glass, of a whiteness equally chrystallic and beautiful. He then took from beneath his robes a little box of ebony, which he unlocked, and from which he produced a head-piece, the face of which, instead of being hard steel or iron, was of glass also, very thin, and quite transparent, through which every muscle and motion of the features might be seen with the greatest distinctness. To the thoughtless vulgar, such a shield seemed only a mockery of that more solid furniture of metal, which, in those days, thoroughly encased the warrior for battle. The inference, accordingly, was very general, that if by any possibility, the accuser succeeded in the combat, he would be indebted solely to supernatural agency for his good fortune. His wand of brass, with its chrystal bulb—his glassy vizor and helmet,—were only regarded as designed to divert the scrutiny from the more secret agency which he employed. “I am ready,” said the accuser. “Hast thou prayed?” demanded his enemy in a mocking fashion. “If thou hast not, get thee to thy knees quickly, and renounce the devil whom thou servest. Verily, but little time is left thee.” “I have prayed and confessed to the Holy Father. Do thou likewise, and make thyself humble and contrite. Repent thee,—for, of a truth, my lord, if the King forbid not this combat, thou art doomed this day, to go to judgment.”