Still the enthusiastic damsel had retained her place on the altar, when a youth, in the dress of a minstrel, with features deadly pale, and his hair dishevelled, came running along the sea-shore towards her. “In God’s name!” cried he, “tell me, I beseech you, have the Moors made a captive of Blanchefleur?” And scarcely had she answered “Yes,” when, in the hurried tone of distraction, he addressed her, “Send then a messenger with a fleet horse to her brother in Normandy! I must find means to follow the Moors! Remember this, that not a moment must be lost!” Thereupon he ran away as quickly as he had come; and not till after he had vanished from her sight did the Lady Bertha remember that it was the minstrel, Aleard, with whom she had then spoken. CHAPTER XIV. Of a fearful battle with the Pagan Finlanders. Now the summer had quite past away, and the autumnal winds began to howl and rage among the wild mountains of the north, though the weather in Gascony had been yet mild and beautiful. On the very same evening when his bride had been carried away by the Moorish prince, Sir Otto von Trautwangen had dismounted from his light-brown charger, and taken his place in a narrow ravine of the mountains, in order to cut off the approach of the Pagans by that passage; for their numbers had now multiplied: they attacked the Christian army by means of ambuscades from all sides; so that they were scarcely able to maintain the ground which they had before won. Seeing the strange position which the young Knight of Trautwangen had chosen, the Swedish prince, who commanded the army, called out to him, demanding to know what was his intention, and wherefore he had allowed himself to be left almost alone? To which Sir Otto replied, “That the pass was too narrow to admit of his being attacked by more than one at a time; and whosoever of the enemy ventured in that manner to approach him would not fail to meet with his match.” In truth, he stood there like a supernatural and guardian-spirit; the graceful youth, with his light hair, and glowing cheeks, contrasting strangely with the grim-visaged dwarfish Finlanders by whom he was now assailed, and of whom with his single arm he had cut down such numbers, that the dead bodies lay like a bulwark before him, which seemed gradually to repulse and terrify his new adversaries. At length, amid the crowd, was descried the approach of some one with armour, which flashed like lightning in the sun’s rays. It was a Pagan hero of Swedish birth, with a high helmet, adorned with horse-hair instead of feathers, on his head, and who now came with his bright weapons clashing and ringing against the Knight of Trautwangen. First, his javelin flew singing through the air over the youth’s head, and in a moment after his sword-strokes fell thick as hail on the black eagle’s crest; by the sight of which he seemed specially enraged.