His handsome features were now distorted with anger and disdain, and it was difficult to recognize in the fierce figure, that seemed the guardian dragon of the fountain, the laughing boy who sat there so quietly a moment before.

The stranger appeared to return the bitter hatred.
"I have found you, Gilbert de Hers," he muttered; "your bugle has rung your knell." Gilbert replied but by a laugh of scorn, and the next instant their swords gleamed in the air.

But just as the two blades met with a sharp clang, there came stealing through the wood the mellow sound of a distant bell.

It was like the voice of an angel forbidding strife.

Those soft, lingering notes seemed to have won a sweetness from the skies to pour out upon the world, and, filling the space between field and cloud, connected for a moment heaven and earth--for they wake in the heart of man the same emotions more perfectly felt in paradise.
For many centuries after the destruction of the Roman Empire, when all human institutions were swept away by the resistless torrent that poured from the North, and the Church of God alone stood safe and firm, with the rainbow of heaven around her, the stern warriors of Germany asserted their rights, or redressed their wrongs with the sword, and scorned to bow before the impotent decrees of a civil tribunal.