Denys drew him aside into the wood, and to his surprise gave him his cross-bow and bolts, enjoining him strictly to lie quiet, and if any ill-looking fellows should find him out and come to him, to bid them keep aloof; and, should they refuse, to shoot them dead at twenty paces. "Honest men keep the path, and, knaves in a wood none but fools do parley with them." With this he snatched up Gerard's axe and set off running, not, as Gerard expected, toward Dusseldorf, but on the road they had come.
Gerard lay aching and smarting, and to him Rome, that seemed so near at starting, looked far, far, off, now that he was two hundred miles nearer it. But soon all his thoughts turned Sevenbergen-wards. How sweet it would be one day to hold Margaret's hand and tell her all he had gone through for her! The very thought of it, and her, soothed him, and in the midst of pain and irritation of the nerves he lay resigned, and sweetly, though faintly, smiling.
He had lain thus more than two hours, when suddenly there were shouts, and the next moment something struck a tree hard by and quivered in it.
He looked, it was an arrow.
He started to his feet. Several missiles rattled among the boughs, and the wood echoed with battle-cries. Whence they came he could not tell, for noises in these huge woods are so reverberated that a stranger is always at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill the whole air. Presently there was a lull: then he heard the fierce galloping of hoofs; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled with shrieks and groans, and above all strange and terrible sounds like fierce claps of thunder, bellowing loud, and then dying off in cracking echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among the trees, and clouds of sulphureous smoke came drifting over his head: and all was still.
Gerard was struck with awe. "What will become of Denys?" he cried. "Oh why did you leave me? Oh Denys, my friend, my friend!"
Just before sunset Denys returned, almost sinking under a hairy bundle. It was the bear's skin.
Gerard welcomed him with a burst of joy that astonished him.
"I thought never to see you again, dear Denys: were you in the battle?"
"No. What battle?"