"She says also that we must hasten, because these men are holding the pass while their comrades free the ship from the ice." Penfold fought on, grim to the end, but his sword had lost its deadliness and his arm was growing numb. His comrades aided him as best they could, but they too were acting upon the defensive, because some of the more daring soldiers had scaled the slippery sides of the pass in a futile endeavour to drag them down. The old man groaned and tottered as the light failed gradually from his eyes. "Let it be said of me," he gasped, "that I gave them half an hour." Voices roared in his ears, like the waves of a stormy sea about to close over his head. "Strike! He is spent. Strike him down." There followed an onward rush. Over the old man's failing body sped the bitterness of death. He felt a sword in his side, another in his shoulder, and at the pain he revived like an old lion, and roared and plunged forward, feeling his way with his point, until he found his striker's heart, and then he shouted with all the strength that was left: "Stand up in my stead, comrade! I have made a good fight, and accounted for the best. They shall run before us yet. To me, comrade! Ha! St. Edward and St. George!" With that last shout he fell, deep into the red snow, his old body spouting blood, and so died like a valiant man of Berks, with his sword fast held, and his grey head set towards the foe. Hough hurled back a soldier, who had clambered up the cliff to dislodge him, and would have flung himself down to stop the way, when on a sudden a tall figure slid down the side opposite him, and stood immediately to defy the body of men sweeping through like an inundating wave, wielding his sword with calm, nervous strength, his keen eyes starting from a thin, brown face. Then Hough's courage gave way, and sinking to his knees, while the enemy rushed through, he cried aloud. Death had no terror for him; but the spectacle of that cold man, whom for an instant he had seen, fighting in the raw light of the dawn, then thrown down and trodden under foot, made him shiver to the heart. "The Lord encompasses us with the spirits of our friends," he cried, knowing that it was Jesse Woodfield who already lay hacked and bruised and buried in the snow of the defile. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED.