Then placing the horn to his lips and drawing a deep breath, he blew with his utmost force.

And then again he blew—­blew like anything.

Not a sound came.

The horn wouldn’t blow!

“Seize him!” cried the Baron.

“Stop,” said Guido, “I claim the laws of chivalry.  I am here to seek the Lady Isolde, betrothed by you to Tancred.  Let me fight Tancred in single combat, man to man.”

A shout of approbation gave consent.

The combat that followed was terrific.

First Guido, raising his mace high in the air with both hands, brought it down with terrible force on Tancred’s mailed head.  Then Guido stood still, and Tancred raising his mace in the air brought it down upon Guido’s head.  Then Tancred stood still and turned his back, and Guido, swinging his mace sideways, gave him a terrific blow from behind, midway, right centre.  Tancred returned the blow.  Then Tancred knelt down on his hands and knees and Guido brought the mace down on his back.  It was a sheer contest of skill and agility.  For a time the issue was doubtful.  Then Tancred’s armour began to bend, his blows weakened, he fell prone.  Guido pressed his advantage and hammered him out as flat as a sardine can.  Then placing his foot on Tancred’s chest, he lowered his vizor and looked around about him.

At this second there was a resounding shriek.

Isolde the Slender, alarmed by the sound of the blows, precipitated herself into the room.

For a moment the lovers looked into each other’s faces.

Then with their countenances distraught with agony they fell swooning in different directions.

There had been a mistake!

Guido was not Guido, and Isolde was not Isolde.  They were wrong about the miniatures.  Each of them was a picture of somebody else.

Torrents of remorse flooded over the lovers’ hearts.

Isolde thought of the unhappy Tancred, hammered out as flat as a picture-card and hopelessly spoilt; of Conrad the Cocoanut head first in the mud, and Sickfried the Susceptible coiled up with agonies of sulphuric acid.

Guido thought of the dead Saracens and the slaughtered Turks.

And all for nothing!

The guerdon of their love had proved vain.  Each of them was not what the other had thought.  So it is ever with the loves of this world, and herein is the medieval allegory of this tale.

The hearts of the two lovers broke together.

They expired.

Meantime Carlo the Corkscrew and Beowulf the Bradawl, and their forty followers, were hustling down the spirals as fast as they could crawl, hind end uppermost.

IV. —­ Gertrude the Governess:  or, Simple Seventeen

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It was a wild and stormy night on the West Coast of
Scotland.  This, however, is immaterial to the present
story, as the scene is not laid in the West of Scotland. 
For the matter of that the weather was just as bad on the
East Coast of Ireland.