“Pagan dog!” he cried, “do you dare to touch with your beast’s foot a Christian boy?” and he struck at the Saxon with a long cart whip which he had in his hand. The end of the lash caught the Saxon’s cheek, on which it raised an ugly-looking wheal. Even in the height of his passion the Briton stood aghast at the change which came in a moment over the form and features of the Saxon. One or two of the bystanders had seen him face to face with an enemy, and had wondered how strangely calm he had seemed to be, showing no sign of excitement, except a certain glitter in his eyes. He had a very different look now. “The form of his visage was changed,” as it was in the Babylonian king(47) when he found himself, for the first time in his life, confronted by a point-blank refusal to obey. A consuming anger, like the Berseker rage of his kinsmen of after times, the Vikings, seemed to possess and transform him. His features worked, as if caught by some strange malady, his eyes literally blazed with fury, his whole figure seemed to dilate. The luckless bailiff was seized round the middle, lifted from the ground as easily as if he had been a child in arms, and hurled with a crash, like a bolt from a catapult, against the wall. He lay there bleeding from nose and mouth, while the horror-stricken Britons stood helpless and afraid to move. [Illustration: Cedric’s Fury.] “Dogs of slaves,” cried Cedric, “do you dare to growl at your master;” and he swept through the terrified crowd, laying them low on either side. Happily at the moment he had no weapon in his hand, but he seized a bar of iron from the anvil of the forge, and swinging it round his head, prepared, it seemed, to deal about him an indiscriminate destruction. What would have followed it is impossible to say. In his fury and in his absolute mastery over that shrinking crowd, he was like a tiger in the midst of a flock of sheep. But at the critical moment, before his hand had dealt a single blow, the apparition of Carna interposed between him and his victims. The uproar in the court had reached her in her chamber, and brought her ready to play her accustomed part of peacemaker. Now she stood, her figure framed like a picture, in the door which opened on the court from the part of the villa which she occupied. She wore a simple dress of white, fastened with a blue girdle; her long chestnut hair fell in loose waves to her waist, for she had not had time to arrange it in more orderly fashion. Her face was pale and troubled, her eyes wide open with a sad surprise. It was indeed another Cedric that she saw from the one whom she had known. Was this terrible savage, who looked more like some dreadful spirit from the abyss than a human creature, the gentle giant in whose mute homage she had felt such an innocent pleasure, the hopeful pupil whom she was teaching, as she hoped, to put away savage ways for the mild and peaceful behaviour of a Christian. As for Cedric, he