“Are you the lord of this pass, Sir Knight?” said Sir Gottfried, haughtily, “or do you hold it against all comers, in honor of your lady-love?”

“I am not the lord of this pass.  I do not hold it against all comers.  I hold it but against one, and he is a liar and a traitor.”

“As the matter concerns me not, I pray you let me pass,” said Gottfried.

“The matter does concern thee, Gottfried of Godesberg.  Liar and traitor! art thou coward, too?”

“Holy Saint Buffo! ’tis a fight!” exclaimed the old hermit (who, too, had been a gallant warrior in his day); and like the old war-horse that hears the trumpet’s sound, and spite of his clerical profession, he prepared to look on at the combat with no ordinary eagerness, and sat down on the overhanging ledge of the rock, lighting his pipe, and affecting unconcern, but in reality most deeply interested in the event which was about to ensue.

As soon as the word “coward” had been pronounced by Sir Ludwig, his opponent, uttering a curse far too horrible to be inscribed here, had wheeled back his powerful piebald, and brought his lance to the rest.

“Ha!  Beauseant!” cried he.  “Allah humdillah!” ’Twas the battle-cry in Palestine of the irresistible Knights Hospitallers.  “Look to thyself, Sir Knight, and for mercy from heaven!  I will give thee none.”

“A Bugo for Katzenellenbogen!” exclaimed Sir Ludwig, piously:  that, too, was the well-known war-cry of his princely race.

“I will give the signal,” said the old hermit, waving his pipe.  “Knights, are you ready?  One, two, three.  Los!” (let go.)

At the signal, the two steeds tore up the ground like whirlwinds; the two knights, two flashing perpendicular masses of steel, rapidly converged; the two lances met upon the two shields of either, and shivered, splintered, shattered into ten hundred thousand pieces, which whirled through the air here and there, among the rocks, or in the trees, or in the river.  The two horses fell back trembling on their haunches, where they remained for half a minute or so.

“Holy Buffo! a brave stroke!” said the old hermit.  “Marry, but a splinter wellnigh took off my nose!” The honest hermit waved his pipe in delight, not perceiving that one of the splinters had carried off the head of it, and rendered his favorite amusement impossible.  “Ha! they are to it again!  O my! how they go to with their great swords!  Well stricken, gray!  Well parried, piebald!  Ha, that was a slicer!  Go it, piebald! go it, gray!—­go it, gray! go it, pie—­Peccavi! peccavi!” said the old man, here suddenly closing his eyes, and falling down on his knees.  “I forgot I was a man of peace.”  And the next moment, muttering a hasty matin, he sprung down the ledge of rock, and was by the side of the combatants.

The battle was over.  Good knight as Sir Gottfried was, his strength and skill had not been able to overcome Sir Ludwig the Hombourger, with right on his side.  He was bleeding at every point of his armor:  he had been run through the body several times, and a cut in tierce, delivered with tremendous dexterity, had cloven the crown of his helmet of Damascus steel, and passing through the cerebellum and sensorium, had split his nose almost in twain.