"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.
His mouth foaming--his face almost green--his eyes full of blood--his brains spattered over his forehead, and several of his teeth knocked out,--the discomfited warrior presented a ghastly spectacle, as, reeling under the effects of the last tremendous blow which the Knight of Hombourg dealt, Sir Gottfried fell heavily from the saddle of his piebald charger; the frightened animal whisked his tail wildly with a shriek and a snort, plunged out his hind legs, trampling for one moment upon the feet of the prostrate Gottfried, thereby causing him to shriek with agony, and then galloped away riderless.
Away! ay, away!--away amid the green vineyards and golden cornfields; away up the steep mountains, where he frightened the eagles in their eyries; away down the clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble; away through the dark pine-forests, where the hungry wolves are howling away over the dreary wolds, where the wild wind walks alone; away through the plashing quagmires, where the will-o'-the-wisp slunk frightened among the reeds; away through light and darkness, storm and sunshine; away by tower and town, high-road and hamlet.