"The end," said Gibamund, impatiently completing the nailing of the edge of the shield with one last blow of the hammer. "I wish it would come. I can bear to witness the suffering--_your_ suffering--no longer. I have constantly urged the King to put an end to it. Let us, let all the Vandals,--the Moors can surrender as prisoners,--charge upon the foe together, and--He would never let me finish. 'That would be suicide,' he answered, 'and sin. We must bear patiently what God has imposed upon us as a punishment. If it is His will. He can yet save us, bear us away from here on the wings of His angels. But the end is approaching--of itself. The number of graves on the slope of the mountain is daily increasing.'" "Yes, the row constantly lengthens; sometimes the high mounds of our Vandals surmounted by the cross!" "Sometimes the faithful Moors' heap of stones with the circle of black pebbles. Yesterday evening we buried the delicate Gundoric; the last scion of the proud Gundings, the darling of his brave father Gundobad." "So the poor boy's sufferings are over? In Carthage the child was always clad in purple silk as he rode through the streets in a shell carriage drawn by ostriches." "Day before yesterday the King brought to the miserable heap of straw where he was lying the fragrant bread he had begged from the enemy. The child devoured it so eagerly that we were obliged to check him. We turned our backs a moment,--I was getting some water with the King for the sick boy,--when a cry of mingled rage and grief summoned us. A Moorish lad, probably attracted by the smell of the bread, had sprung in through the open window and torn it from between the child's teeth. It made a very deep impression on the King. 'This child, too, the guiltless one? O terrible God!' he cried again and again. I closed the boy's dying eyes to-day." "It cannot last much longer. The people have killed the last horse except Styx." "Styx shall not be slaughtered," cried Hilda. "He bore you from certain death; he saved you." "_You_ saved me, with your Valkyria ride," exclaimed Gibamund; and, happy in the midst of all the wretchedness, he pressed his beautiful wife to his heart, kissing her golden hair, her eyes, her noble brow. "Hark! what is that?" "It is the song which he has composed and is singing to the harp Fara sent him. Well for thee, Teja's stringed instrument, that thou art not compelled to accompany such a dirge," she cried wrathfully, springing up and tossing back her waving locks. "I would rather have shattered my harp on the nearest rocks than lent it for such a song." "But it works like a spell upon the Moors and Vandals." "They do not understand it at all; the words are Latin. He has rejected alliteration as pagan, as the magic of runes! He allows no one to mention his last battle-song."