Just then a great gust of wind swept through the aisle. The gates of the church and castle all groaned and rattled; an old banner right over his head began to wave and rustle; so that he started suddenly from his meditations, and looked anxiously round to his armour. Thereupon a gigantic figure came forward betwixt him and the altar, stretching out a long black arm towards the treasure over which he should have stood sentinel! Incensed, he directly rushed up to the dark apparition, and seized on it so violently, that the helmet which it wore fell rattling, along with various weapons, to the ground, while, through the cloud of dust that rose from the old rusty fragments, a fleshless skeleton’s head grinned out, as if scornfully, upon him. With horror he struck at it with his sword; whereupon the death’s-head, with the coat of mail and all its appurtenances, fell to the ground with a tremendous crash. Then, for the first time, he perceived plainly that no ghost nor supernatural visitant had come against him, but that it was only with one of the lifeless monuments projecting from the wall with which he had contended. A new duty thus devolved on him; he had to collect the whole together again; to make the old rusty coat of mail stand erect; especially to place the skull on the shoulders, and surmount it once more with the ponderous helmet. In the course of this labour, when he took up the death’s-head, it appeared that he had inflicted on it a deep scar with his sword, and could almost believe that it now grinned on him, not in scorn, but with pain and torment. This notion confused him strangely; and when he had set all to rights, he took off the helmet once more, in order to be convinced whether his imagination had misled him. Hereupon he perceived, that without doubt there were several wounds on the head, and that one of them (for he had struck but once) must have been inflicted by his sword; so that he hastened to cover up the frightful object. Returning then to the altar, he knelt down, and prayed to Heaven for forgiveness of the error which he had committed, in leaving the armour, which it was his duty to guard; in consequence of which the confusion of that spectral combat had been inflicted upon him. It seemed here as if the sacred image of our Redeemer over the sanctuary looked down kindly and encouragingly on him; and he was again tranquillized and cheerful. Sometimes, if the thought came with a chill shuddering over him, that his first combat, since he had been made a knight, had been with a ghastly defenceless skeleton; then his mother’s mild voice once more rose on his ears, softly chaunting four verses which he had often heard in a ballad composed by Walter the minstrel:-- “Dark night precedes the morn, So grief may joyaunce bring; And death leads through the wintry grave To life’s eternal spring.”