"That is my secret, Neroweg. It will become _ours_ after we shall have reached the heart of the country." Thus conversing, the monk and the Frankish chief slowly ascend the craggy slope of the defile. From time to time, some of the horsemen, or foot soldiers, detached as scouts, ride back to acquaint Neroweg with their observations. Finally, Hugh himself returns and informs his master that there is nothing to cause any apprehension on the score of an ambuscade. Completely reassured by these reports, and by the explanations of the monk, Neroweg gives the order for the advance of his troops, the footmen first, the horsemen next, then the baggage, and last of all a rear corps of foot soldiers. The army corps breaks up and enters the pass that is so narrow as to allow a passage to only four men abreast. The long and winding column of men covered with iron, crowded together, and moving slowly, presents a strange spectacle from the top of the rocks that dominate the narrow route. It might be taken for some gigantic serpent with iron scales, deploying its sinuous folds in a ravine cut between two walls of granite. The misgivings of the Franks, somewhat alarmed when they first began threading their way through a passage so propitious to an ambush, are presently removed and make place for unquestioning confidence. Already the vanguard that precedes Neroweg and the monk is drawing near the issue of the defile, while at the other end the baggage wagons, drawn by oxen, begin to set themselves in motion followed by the rear guard that consists of Thuringian horsemen and Saxon archers. The last wagons and the rear guard have barely entered the defile, when suddenly the lugubrious cry of the night bird, resembling that which had greeted the first arrival of the Frankish army, resounds again, and is echoed from peak to peak, along the whole length of the overtopping rocks. Immediately thereupon, pushed by invisible arms, several enormous boulders detach themselves from the surrounding rocks that an instant before seemed a solid part of themselves, roll and bound with the rattle of thunder from the top of the crest down to the foot of the mountain, and fall crashing upon the wagons, crushing a large number of soldiers to death, mutilating many more and disabling the train. In their paroxysms of death, or rendered furious by their wounds, the oxen crowd upon or roll over one another, and throw the rear guard of the Franks into such frightful disorder that it is wholly unable to make another step in advance; it is cut off from the gross of the troops by the lumber in its way; it is reduced to utter impotence. All along the rest of the length of the defile of Glen-Clan the Franks are in similar plight. All along the line, fragments of rocks roll down from the overtopping crests, crushing and decimating the compact mass of soldiers below. The gigantic serpent of iron is mutilated, cut into bleeding