Like smoke in the wake of a firebrand, confusion rose behind him; a din of exclamations loosed on the air and the clangor of weapons caught down from the wall. Through it, the Etheling’s voice sounded strongly. “To the palisade, all of you! They may not wait till morning. To the forest side; and keep them from it as you would keep off death!” He bent and shook the crouching page. “My armor, boy! How! Would you have me read treason in your sluggishness? My armor!” The page started up, but it was only to stare past him and fling out his hand toward a window, where a bright light had suddenly shot athwart the darkness: “Lord, they have set fire to something!” The voice of old Morcard rose shrill: “To the storehouses! Save the grain!” There was a wild rush for the door; but on the threshold they were met by the shouts of watchmen hurrying from the parapets. “Lord, the court is swarming with them!”... “They have cut through the palisade on the forest side!”... “They had brush laid ready—“... “Waited only for him—“... “Holy saints, what is the meaning of that?”... “Something else has taken!” From the stairway above them came a piercing cry: “The storehouses! They have fired them from inside! The lead is melting like ice!”... “The grain!”... “The grain!” In their midst the young lord stood in helpless fury; and the hand he had grasped around his sword-hilt gripped it so hard that blood started under each nail. But his page bent and kissed the clenched fist with a cry of fierce exulting. “You will never get out to find your lily-fair lady. You will never have a lady wife, lord! We shall die together.” CHAPTER XIV. How The Fates Cheated Randalin There is a mingling of affection Where one can tell Another all his mind. Hávamál. After that night the deep-set windows of Ivarsdale looked out upon some grim sights. The first morning it was a skirmish in the meadow beyond the foot-bridge, when the three-score farmer-soldiers came loyally to their leader’s aid. Though Kendred of Hazelford marched bravely at their head, they were practically uncaptained; with any kind of weapon in their hands and no kind of armor over their home-spun. What chance had they against sixty picked warriors, led by the fiercest chief of a race of chieftains? They met, and there was a moment of clash and of clangor, a moment of awful commotion; and when the whirling dust-clouds settled, the only homespun that was moving was that which was flying, sped by Danish arrows. All the rest of the day the Tower windows looked out upon a litter of brown heaps, here and there a white face upturned or a scarf-end fluttering in the autumn wind. Wild with helpless misery, the Lord of Ivarsdale would have charged the Berserkers with his handful of armed servants if the old cniht had not restrained him almost by force; when he spent his breath in railing at everything between earth and sky.