As they advanced, the circle of the Huns, rendered skilful in such an evolution by their practice in hunting, grew smaller and smaller, pressing into a narrower ring; and forth from among them were driven a crowd of pale and ghastly wretches, who knew the fatal hour of their immolation nigh, and yet, with vain and fruitless hopes, looked round for impossible escape. That iron ring was at length narrowed to less than a bowshot in diameter; and some hundred or more of the chief warriors pushing their horses forward, drove the trembling slaves on to the brink of the pit.
The golden coffin was slowly lowered down into the grave. Those who were behind pressed onward to behold. The swords of the nearest warriors leaped from their sheaths, waved above the heads of the victims, and a loud and fearful shriek rang up to the offended sky. Jewels, and gold, and precious stones were showered in from all hands among the blood and writhing bodies that half filled up that horrible tomb. Then piled they in the cold gray soil, till it rose in a mount high above the rest of the land. They covered it with the turf they had removed. Night fell, and all was done.
* * * * * *
An old man stood upon a hill and gazed, and though arrows fell at his feet, still he looked forth upon a widespread grassy plain, where two mighty hosts had been contending, from the third hour after the dawn of day till the fourth hour following noon. They had met, myriads upon myriads; but now thin and scanty was the field, and few and weary were the combatants; but still that old man gazed, and still his voice murmured forth, "Lord God Almighty, thou dealest righteously! The slayers of all men are slain by their own swords!"
At length, where flowed a rivulet on to the neighbouring river, those two dark armies seemed separated for a space, and rolled, like two thunder-clouds ready to meet, at a little distance from either bank: then, like lightning from those clouds, sprang forth two gallant men, borne on towards each other by their fiery chargers, as swiftly and unwearied as if throughout that day there had neither been fatigue nor strife. The one was habited as a Roman, and his steed, plunging in the stream, bore him to the other bank ere his adversary could reach it. They met; their swords waved in the air; the eyes of the beholders were dazzled; but, in a moment after, the barbarian was seen bending to his saddle-bow. A second deep stroke descended on his neck, and, falling headlong, he rolled, a corpse, upon the plain!
The Gepidæ poured across the stream: the Huns fled in disarray; slaughter and destruction hung upon their rear, and the mighty fabric of Attila's empire was at an end for ever.
* * * * * *
Nearly thirty years after, when the empire of the West was at an end, and the empire of the East revived for a time with a show of false prosperity, a powerful man, clothed in the splendid arms of a pretorian prefect, wandered up one of the low hills which border the Illyrian shore. He was led by a woman, on whose fair countenance remained the traces of splendid beauty; and whose deep blue eyes still retained an expression of deep, devoted tenderness, though that tenderness was now given to the highest object of human feelings. She was clothed in the habit of a recluse, such as was then common, and the way they took was towards the cemetery of a solitary nunnery. The guards of the prefect remained below, but he himself was admitted by a special favour; and, passing through the little wicket gate into the calm and silent spot where reposed the ashes of the holy and the pure, they came, after a few steps, to a grave covered with fresh turf.
"She lies there!" said Neva--and Theodore cast himself down upon the grave of Ildica, and wept!