"In thus wording my demand I had really been guided only by my own intuitive sense of justice, without being actuated by any other motive; but the result proved that I could not have done better if I had been the most crafty demagogue. Standing alone, I should have had no chance of accomplishing my bold innovation; but now my cause was the cause of all, that is of all the 'new boys,' and chance willed that our numbers were exactly the same as those of the other party. Even in regard to bodily strength, which boys so well know how to rate according to age, we might probably have compared tolerably with them, and the little that was wanting would have been well supplied by the enthusiasm for the good cause which I unceasingly labored to arouse--if it had not been for Carl Brandow. Who could withstand this eighteen-years-old hero, slender and strong as a young pine? He would rage among us like Achilles among the Trojans, and strew the field--a retired open space in a little wood behind the school-house--with the bodies of the enemies he had hurled to the ground; for it was agreed that whoever in struggling should touch the earth with his back was to be considered conquered, and desist from the battle, which was to be decided in this manner before the eyes of six honorable members of the first class, who accepted the office of umpires with a readiness deserving of acknowledgment. "Yet there was no retreat, even if we, which was not the case, had thought of making one. The hour arrived--one Saturday afternoon, on which we had contrived to evade the watchfulness of the teacher--and I do not believe that soldiers ordered to assault a battery vomiting death and destruction can feel more solemn and earnest than did we. I may say, especially I. I had caused the struggle; I had involved all the brave boys in it; I felt responsible for the result, and for the disgrace in case of defeat--an event which seemed more probable every moment. That I was determined to do my utmost and strain every nerve is a matter of course. I hoped and prayed the gods that Carl Brandow might fall to me--for the antagonists were to be drawn by lot, and only he who had conquered his opponent was permitted to choose from among those who had vanquished theirs until all was decided. I do not remember whether the senior boys, who devised these ingenious rules, had copied from Sir Walter Scott; I only know I have never read the famous description of the tournament at Ashby, in Ivanhoe, without being reminded of that Saturday afternoon--the shady forest glade, and the boyish faces glowing with courage and ardor for the combat. "And, as in the tournament of Ashby, a wholly unforeseen accident in the person of the Black Knight, the _Noir Faineant_, saved the hero's otherwise hopelessly lost cause, so it was here.