'I shall tear him from the pinnacle of his power at last!' he whispered fiercely to himself.

'For what I have told her this night, his kinswoman will hate him--I knew it while she spoke! For his desertion of his post, Alaric may dishonour him, may banish him, may hang him! His fate is at my mercy; I shall rid myself nobly of him and his command! More than all the rest of his nation I loathe this Goth! I will be by when they drag him to the tree, and taunt him with his shame, as he has taunted me with my deformity.' Here he paused to laugh in complacent approval of his project, quickening his steps and hugging himself joyfully in the barbarous exhilaration of his triumph.
His secret meditations had thus occupied him for some time longer, when the sound of a footstep was audible outside the door.

He recognised it instantly, and called softly to the person without to approach.

At the signal of his voice a man entered--less athletic in build, but in deformity the very counterpart of himself.

The following discourse was then immediately held between the two Huns, the new-comer beginning it thus:-- 'Have you tracked him to the door ?' 'To the very threshold.' 'Then his downfall is assured! I have seen Alaric.' 'We shall trample him under our feet!--this boy, who has been set over us that are his elders, because he is a Goth and we are Huns! But what of Alaric?
How did you gain his ear ?' 'The Goths round his tent scoffed at me as a savage, and swore that I was begotten between a demon and a witch.