upon the same thorny bush; while the heads which had worn them rolled together in the same gully, and stared their deathless hatred from their dead eyes.

The Turks in falling back discovered the mouth of the cave in which the peasants had taken refuge. As the Moslem bugles sounded the retreat, lest they should be cut off by the Christians who had scaled the heights on their flanks, they seized the women and children, who soon were lost to each other's sight in the skurry of the retiring host. The hands of Constantine were tied about the neck, and his legs about the loins, of a huge Moslem, to whose keeping he had been committed. An arrow pierced the soldier to the heart.

It seemed as if more than keenness of eye—some inspiration of his fatherly instinct—led Kabilovitsch on through the vast confusion, far down the slope, outrunning the fugitives and their pursuers, avoiding contact with any one by leaping from rock to rock and darting like a serpent through secret by-paths, until he reached the horsemen of the Turks, who had not been able to follow the foot-soldiers up the steep ascent. He knew that his little girl would be given in charge to some one of these. He, therefore, concealed himself in the growing darkness behind a clump of evergreen trees, close to which one must pass in order to reach the horses. A moment later, with the stealth and the strength of a panther, he leaped upon a Turk. The man let go the tiny form of the girl he was carrying; but, before he could assume an attitude of defence, the iron grip of Kabilovitsch was upon his throat, and the steel of the infuriated old man in his heart. Under the sheltering darkness, carrying his rescued child, Kabilovitsch threaded his way along ledges and balconies of rock projecting so slightly from the precipitous mountain that they would have been discerned, even in daylight, by no eye less expert than his own. At one place his way was blocked by a dead body which had fallen from the ledge above, and been caught by the tangled limbs of the mountain laurel. Without relinquishing his load, he pushed with his foot the lifeless mass down through the entanglement, and listened to the snapping of the bushes and the crashing of loosened stones, until the heavy thud announced that it had found a resting place.

"So God rest his soul, be he Christian or Paynim!" muttered the old man. "And now, my child, are you frighted?"

"No, father, not when you are with me," said Morsinia.

"Could you stand close to the rock, and hold very tight to the bush, if I leave you a moment?"

"Yes, father, I will hold to the bush as tight as it holds to the rock."

Kabilovitsch grasped a root of laurel, and, testing it with main strength, swung clear of the ledge, until his foot rested upon another ledge nearly the length of his body below. Bracing himself so that he spanned the interval with the strength of a granite pillar, he bade the child crawl cautiously in the direction of his voice. As she touched his hands, he lifted her with perfect poise, and placed her feet beside his own on a broad table rock.

"Now, blessed be Jesu, we are safe! Did I not tell you I would some day take you to a cavern which no one but Milosch and I had ever seen? Here it is. Unless Sultan Amurath hires the eagles to be his spies—as they say he does—no eye but God's will see us here even when the sun rises. You did not know, my little princess, what a coward your old father had become, to run away from a battle. Did you, my darling?" said he kissing her. "Never did I dream that Ar——, that Kabilovitsch would fly like a frightened partridge through the bushes. But my girl's heart has taken the place of my own to-night."

As he spoke he slipped from his shoulders the rough cape, or armless jacket, of bear-skin, and wrapped the girl closely in it. He then carried her beneath the roof of a little cave, where he enfolded her in his arms, making his own back a barrier against the cutting night wind and the whirling snow. The cold was intense. Thinking only of the danger to the already half-benumbed and wearied body of the child, he took off his conical cap, and unwound the many folds of coarse woollen cloth of which it was made, and with it wrapped her limbs and feet.

Thus the night was passed. With the first streak of the dawn Kabilovitsch crept cautiously from the ledge, and soon returned with the news that the Turks had vanished, swept away by the tide of Christian soldiers which was still pouring over and down the mountain in pursuit.

Horrible was the scene which everywhere greeted them as they clambered back toward the road. The dead were piled upon the dying in every ravine. Red streaks seamed the white snow—channels in which the current of many a life had drained away. The road was choked with the hurrying victors. But the old man's familiarity with the ground found paths which the nimble feet of the maid could climb; so that the day was not far advanced when they stood on the site of their home. Scarcely a trace of the little hamlet remained. Whatever could be burned had fed the camp-fires of the preceding night. The houses had been thrown down by the soldiers in rifling the grain bins which were built between their outer and inner walls.

The old man sat down upon the door-stone of what had been his home. His head dropped upon his bosom. Morsinia stood by his side, her arm about his neck, and her cheek pressed close to his, so that her bright golden hair mingled with his gray beard—as in certain mediæval pictures the artist expresses a pleasing fancy in hammered work of silver and gold. They scarcely noticed that a group of horsemen, more gaily uniformed than the ordinary soldiers, had halted and were looking at them.

"By the eleven thousand virgins of Coln! I never saw a more unique picture than that," said one who wore a skull cap of scarlet, while an attendant carried his heavy helmet. "If Masaccio were with us I would have him paint that scene for our new cathedral at Milano, as an allegory of the captivity in Babylon."

"Rather of the captivity in Avignon. It would be a capital representation of the Holy Father and his daughter the Church," replied a companion laughing. "Only I would have the painter insert the portrait of your eminence, Cardinal Julian, as delivering them both."

"That would not be altogether unhistoric; for the deliverance was not wholly wrought until our time," replied the cardinal, evidently gratified with the flattering addition which his comrade, King Vladislaus, had made to his pleasing conceit. "But if to-day's victory be as thorough as it now looks, and we drive the Turks out of Europe, it would serve as a picture of the captivity in which the haughty, half-infidel emperor of the Greeks and his daughter, Byzantium, will soon be to Rome."

"But, by my crown," said Vladislaus, "and with due reverence for the great cardinal under whose cap is all the brain that Rome can now boast of—I think the Greeks will find as much spiritual desolation in Mother Church as these worthy people have about them here."

"I can pardon that speech to the newly baptized king of half-barbarian Hungary, when I would not shrive another for it," replied Julian petulantly. "The son of a pagan may be allowed much ignorance regarding the mystery of the Holy See. But a truce to our badgering! Let us speak to this old fellow. Good man, is this your house? By Saint Catherine! the girl is beautiful, your highness."

"It was my home, Sire, yesterday, but now it is his that wants it," replied Kabilovitsch.

"And where do you go now?" asked the cardinal.

"Towards God's gate, Sire; and I wish I might see it soon, but for this little one," said the old man, rising.

"Holy Peter let you in when you get there,"