Still the harsh clanking cry is heard; and now, as they and the cloud still drift northward, they reappear, now all descending, above the little esplanade before the cottage-door where Edith stands watching.
The heron is below, falling plumb through the air with his back downward, his wings flapping at random, his long neck trussed on his breast, and his sharp bill projecting upward, perilous as the point of a Moorish assagay. The falcons both above him, towering for the swoop, Aradas' Helvellyn the topmost.
He pointed to the birds with his riding-rod triumphantly, and glancing an arch look at his mistress, "Helvellyn has it," he said; "Palestine or no Palestine, on the stoop!"
"On the hawks!" she replied; "and heaven decide it!"
"I will wear the glove in my casque in the first career," and, as he spoke, the falcon closed his wings and came down with a swoop like lightning on the devoted quarry. The rush of his impetuous plunge, cleaving the air, was clearly audible, above the rustling of the leaves and the noise of the pursuers.
But the gallant heron met the shock unflinching, and Helvellyn, gallant Helvellyn, came down like a catapult upon the deadly beak of the fierce wader, and was impaled from breast to back in a second. There was a minute of wild convulsive fluttering, and then the heron shook off his assailant, who drifted slowly down, writhing and struggling, with all his beauteous plumes disordered and bedropped with gore, to the dull earth, while, with a clang of triumph, the victor once more turned to rise heavenward.
The cry of triumph was premature, for, even as it was uttered, brave Diamond made his stoop. Swift and sure as the bolt of Heaven, he found his aim, and, burying his keen singles to the sheath in the back of the tortured waterfowl, clove his skull at a single stroke of the trenchant bill.
"Hurrah! hurrah! brave Diamond," cried the delighted girl. "No Palestine! no Palestine! For this, your bells and jesses shall be of gold, beautiful Diamond, and your drink of the purest wine of Gascony."
And, giving head to her jennet, the first of all the train she reached the spot where the birds lay struggling on the grass within ten yards of Kenric's door, and, as she sprang from her saddle, was caught in the arms of Edith.
"God's blessings on you! welcome! welcome! dearest lady," cried the beautiful Saxon, raining down tears of gratitude.