"No, father, not when you are with me," said Morsinia.
"Could you stand close to the rock, and hold very tight to the bush, if I leave you a moment?"
"Yes, father, I will hold to the bush as tight as it holds to the rock."
Kabilovitsch grasped a root of laurel, and, testing it with main strength, swung clear of the ledge, until his foot rested upon another ledge nearly the length of his body below. Bracing himself so that he spanned the interval with the strength of a granite pillar, he bade the child crawl cautiously in the direction of his voice. As she touched his hands, he lifted her with perfect poise, and placed her feet beside his own on a broad table rock.
"Now, blessed be Jesu, we are safe! Did I not tell you I would some day take you to a cavern which no one but Milosch and I had ever seen? Here it is. Unless Sultan Amurath hires the eagles to be his spies—as they say he does—no eye but God's will see us here even when the sun rises. You did not know, my little princess, what a coward your old father had become, to run away from a battle. Did you, my darling?" said he kissing her. "Never did I dream that Ar——, that Kabilovitsch would fly like a frightened partridge through the bushes. But my girl's heart has taken the place of my own to-night."
As he spoke he slipped from his shoulders the rough cape, or armless jacket, of bear-skin, and wrapped the girl closely in it. He then carried her beneath the roof of a little cave, where he enfolded her in his arms, making his own back a barrier against the cutting night wind and the whirling snow. The cold was intense. Thinking only of the danger to the already half-benumbed and wearied body of the child, he took off his conical cap, and unwound the many folds of coarse woollen cloth of which it was made, and with it wrapped her limbs and feet.
Thus the night was passed. With the first streak of the dawn Kabilovitsch crept cautiously from the ledge, and soon returned with the news that the Turks had vanished, swept away by the tide of Christian soldiers which was still pouring over and down the mountain in pursuit.
Horrible was the scene which everywhere greeted them as they clambered back toward the road. The dead were piled upon the dying in every ravine. Red streaks seamed the white snow—channels in which the current of many a life had drained away. The road was choked with the hurrying victors. But the old man's familiarity with the ground found paths which the nimble feet of the maid could climb; so that the day was not far advanced when they stood on the site of their home. Scarcely a trace of the little hamlet remained. Whatever could be burned had fed the camp-fires of the preceding night. The houses had been thrown down by the soldiers in rifling the grain bins which were built between their outer and inner walls.
The old man sat down upon the door-stone of what had been his home. His head dropped upon his bosom. Morsinia stood by his side, her arm about his neck, and her cheek pressed close to his, so that her bright golden hair mingled with his gray beard—as in certain mediæval pictures the artist expresses a pleasing fancy in hammered work of silver and gold. They scarcely noticed that a group of horsemen, more gaily uniformed than the ordinary soldiers, had halted and were looking at them.
"By the eleven thousand virgins of Coln! I never saw a more unique picture than that," said one who wore a skull cap of scarlet, while an attendant carried his heavy helmet. "If Masaccio were with us I would have him paint that scene for our new cathedral at Milano, as an allegory of the captivity in Babylon."