XXIII

With one mighty whirl he sent it; flashing from his hand it came, Like the lightning from the heavens in a whirl of awful flame, And betwixt the brows of Sassard and his two false eyeballs passed, And the murderer sank before it, like a tree before the blast. “Now ye minions of a traitor if you look for vengeance, come!” And his voice was like a trumpet when it clangs a victor home. But a cry from far below him rose like thunder upward, “Nay! Let them turn and meet the husband if they hunger for the fray.” O the yell that sprang to heaven as that voice swept up the stair, And the slaughter dire that followed in another moment there! From the least unto the greatest, from the henchman to the lord, Not a man on all that stairway lived to sheath again his sword. At the top that flame-bound forehead, at the base that blade of fire⁠— ’Twas the meeting of two tempests in their potency and ire. Ere the moon could falter inward with its pity and its woe, Beaufort saw the path before him unencumbered of the foe. Saw his pathway unencumbered and strode up and o’er the floor, Even to the very threshold of his lovely lady’s door, And already in his fancy did he see the golden beam Of her locks upon his shoulder and her sweet eyes’ happy gleam: When behold a form upstarting from the shadows at his side. That with naked sword uplifted barred the passage to his bride; It was Enguerrand the dauntless, but with staring eyes and hair Blowing wild about a forehead pale as snow in moonlit glare.