But next morning as the sunlight rose in splendor over all, Hugh the mighty, sank heart-wounded in his station on the wall, At the noon the valiant Raoul of the merry eye and heart, Gave his beauty and his jestings to the foeman’s jealous dart. Gallant Maurice next sank faltering with a death wound ‘neath his hair, But still fighting on till Sassard pressed across him up the stair. Generous Clement followed after, crying as his spirit passed, “Sons of Germain to the rescue, and be loyal to the last!” Gentle Jaspar, lordly Clarence, Sessamine the doughty brand, Even Henri who had yielded ne’er before to mortal hand; One by one they fall and perish, while the vaunting foemen pour Through the breach and up the courtway to the very turret’s door. Enguerrand and Stephen only now were left of all that nine, To protect the single stairway from the traitor’s fell design; But with might as ’twere of thirty, did they wield the axe and brand, Striving in their desperation the fierce onslaught to withstand. But what man of power so godlike he can stay the billow’s wrack, Or with single-handed weapon hold an hundred foemen back! As the sun turned sadly westward, with a wild despairing cry, Stephen bowed his noble forehead and sank down on earth to die. “Ah ha!” then cried cruel Sassard with his foot upon the stair, “Have I come to thee, my boaster?” and he whirled his sword in air. “Thou who pratest of thy power to protect her to the death, What think’st thou now of Sassard and the wind’s aspiring breath?” “What I think let this same show you,” answered fiery Enguerrand, And he poised his lofty battle-ax with sure and steady hand; “Now as Heaven loveth justice, may this deathly weapon fall On the murderer of my brothers and th’ undoer of us all.” With one mighty whirl he sent it; flashing from his hand it came, Like the lightning from the heavens in a whirl of awful flame, And betwixt the brows of Sassard and his two false eyeballs passed, And the murderer sank before it, like a tree before the blast. “Now ye minions of a traitor if you look for vengeance, come!” And his voice was like a trumpet when it clangs a victor home. But a cry from far below him rose like thunder upward, “Nay! Let them turn and meet the _husband_ if they hunger for the fray.” O the yell that sprang to heaven as that voice swept up the stair, And the slaughter dire that followed in another moment there! From the least unto the greatest, from the henchman to the lord, Not a man on all that stairway lived to sheath again his sword. At the top that flame-bound forehead, at the base that blade of fire— ’Twas the meeting of two tempests in their potency and ire. Ere the moon could falter inward with its pity and its woe, Beaufort saw the path before him unencumbered of the foe.