Gilbert heard the two words, and while they were still in his ears, half understood, Dunstan had slipped away among the squires and knights around them, and was lost to sight. One minute had not passed when a wild yell rent the air, with fierce words, high and clear, which thousands must have heard at the very first, even had they not been repeated again and again. "The King has betrayed us! The King is a traitor to the Cross!" At the very instant a stone flew straight from Dunstan's unerring hand, and struck the King's horse fairly between the eyes, upon the rich frontlet, heavy with gold embroidery. The charger reared up violently to his height, and before he had got his head down to plunge, Dunstan's furious scream split the air again, and the second stone struck the King himself full on the breast, and rolled to the saddle and then to the ground. "The King has betrayed us all! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!" There never yet was a feverish, terror-struck throng of men, suddenly disheartened by the unanswerable evidence of a great defeat by which they themselves might be lost, that would not take up the cry of "Traitor!" against their leaders. Before he raised his voice, Dunstan had got among men who knew him neither by sight nor by name, and the second stone had not sped home before he was gone again in a new direction, silent now, with compressed lips, his inscrutable dark eyes looking sharply about him. He had done his work, and he knew what might happen to him if he were afterwards recognized. But none heeded him. The uproar went surging towards the King with a rising fury, like the turn of the tide in a winter storm, roaring up to the breaking pitch, and many would have stoned him and torn him to pieces; but there were many also, older and cooler men, who pressed round him, shoulder to shoulder, with swords drawn and flashing in the sunlight, and faces set to defend their liege lord and sovereign. In an instant the flying Germans were forgotten; and the Emperor and his army, and the meaning of the Holy War and of the Cross itself, were gone from men's minds in the fury of riot on the one side, in the stern determination of defence on the other. The vast weight of men rolled forward, pushed by those behind, forcing the King and those who stood by him to higher ground. In dire distress, and almost hopeless of extricating her gentle troop from destruction, the Queen heard the new tumult far away, and felt the close press yielding on one side. The word 'traitor' ran along like a quick echo from mouth to mouth, repeated again and again, sometimes angrily, sometimes in tones of unbelief, but always repeated, until there was scarcely one man in a hundred thousand whose lips had not formed the syllables. Eleanor saw her husband and his companions with their drawn swords moving in the air, on the knoll; she heard the stinging word, and a hard and scornful look lingered in her face a moment.