In a hand-to-hand encounter there can be but little opportunity for strategy or leadership, except in the purely physical sense. Yet, on either side, the men fought as though animated by a common instinct, the Doomsmen striving to force the Stockaders back into the gateway passage, and the latter endeavoring to cut their way bodily through the mass of the defenders and so divide its strength. For a while the tide began to run with the allies, and the Doomsmen were obliged to fall back slowly towards the interior barricade on the east side of the square that protected the women and children. Constans, panting from his exertions, snatched at this moment of respite to regain his breath. A moment before he had stumbled against a small keg that was rolling about under the feet of the struggling men; this he up-ended and mounted for a better look around. It was true; the Doomsmen were really giving way, and the victory was all but won. Yet not quite, for even as he gazed the onrushing line of the triumphant Stockaders sagged backward at the centre, and the Doomsman yell broke out. What was it? What had happened? Emerging from the portal of the White Tower came half a dozen bearers carrying between them a chair in which sat a man--an old man with a shock of snow-white hair covering his massive head. And those shoulders needed no identification from the familiar wolf-skin that lay across them. This could be none other than Dom Gillian, Chief and Overlord of the Doomsmen, Father of the Gray People. He wore no armor and carried no shield, but his hand gripped a great war-mace studded with silver nails, fit emblem of the authority supreme that its own weight had created. But that had been full half a century ago. The old man made a movement as though to rise. Two of the attendants attempted to assist him, but he waved them back. Ah, the wonder of it as that huge bulk reared itself to full height! An ordinary man might stand comfortably under his out-stretched arm and barely join the tips of his fingers in measuring around the monster's girth. But there was more than mere bigness with which to reckon. The close observer might notice that his armpits and the corresponding parts under the knee were not hollow, as is ordinarily the case, but were filled with a solid mass of muscle and tendon. And this was Dom Gillian, with the weight of ninety-odd years upon his back. What manner of man must he have been in the noonday of his strength!