“It is the Lord!” replied Arnold:  “’He casteth down and he raiseth up, and his judgments are over all the earth.’  But what bitterness for the wife, alas! for the widow of the unfortunate Theobald!  Imprudent man! why did he flee?  Would it not have been better for him to have submitted to numbers, and been taken prisoner?  He would now be living, and his house would not have been burned!”

“Did his pursuers say,” asked Ethbert, “that he was dead?”

Arnold.  They were two of our chevaliers; and I was informed, that their intention was to seize him; that they called to him repeatedly, and at last, in the wood, pierced his horse with a lance, that they might be able to take him prisoner; but they declared that, in falling, the horse had crushed his rider, who had been killed immediately by striking his head against a rock.  Such was their account.  The Lord knows whether it was so; but Theobald has perished.  Poor widow!  Sorrowful and feeble orphans!

“My lord would then have defended him,” said Ethbert, feelingly, “had he been able?”

Arnold, (with warmth.) I would have preserved his life at the peril of my own.

Ethbert.  The life of your enemy?

Arnold.  Does Ethbert forget the word of his God?  Or, does he not yet know that “if we love those who love us,” we act only like publicans and men of the world?

Ethbert.  Arnold, the Lion, will, therefore, bless the Lord, when he learns that the Iron-Hearted was not killed, and that he was taken, a living man, from the spot where he fell.

“Ethbert! is that the truth?” said Arnold, seizing the arm of his servant.

“It was I, my lord, who held the torch which illuminated the dark forest, and it was between the trunks of the oaks and pines that I saw first a horse extended on the motionless body of a warrior.”

Arnold.  And this warrior——­

Ethbert.  Was Theobald!  Yes, my lord, it was he who had just, as he thought, struck your death-blow.

Arnold.  And who directed your steps thither, at night?

Ethbert.  God, himself.  O, what a work of his wonderful love!  Yes, God himself guided your noble father and your son to the Stag Cliffs at the moment when Theobald, flying before the two chevaliers, passed through the defile of the wood; and your father summoned Matthew and myself to descend there with him.

Arnold, (with adoration.) My father! sent from God to the murderer of his son?  How wonderful are the ways of the Most High!  But, Ethbert, did you not say that he was dead?

Ethbert.  We thought so.  But your pious and benevolent father, my lord, knelt, touched the supposed, corpse, and exclaimed, “He is not dead!” and aided by our hands, disengaged him.  He extended him on the mossy ground, called for water, bathed and refreshed the pale countenance of the chevalier; his life returned, and your father glorified God.