Just then the village school-master came by, and seeing what was going on, cried, indignantly,
"You cruel boy! it would serve you right if you were to fall and injure yourself."
The words were truer than he intended, for Banner, startled by the shout, lost his hold and fell headlong to the ground. A cry of horror burst from the lookers-on, who were all over the fence in an instant, and the old teacher, dismayed at the effect of his rebuke, was not the hindmost. But to their amazement they found that "the boy who could not be hurt" had deserved his name once more. He had alighted upon a heap of straw, and though stunned and slightly bruised, was otherwise not a whit the worse.
"All right, boys," said he, faintly, "the eggs aren't broken, anyhow. Here, Olaf." And he put his prize into the trembling hands of the little cripple, who was crying bitterly.
"God bless thee, my brave lad!" said the old teacher, losing all his anger in honest admiration of the boy's courage. "Thou art one who will be heard of yet."
II.
"Stand firm, lads! we'll beat them yet," shouted a tall handsome man in the uniform of an Austrian Colonel, who was doing his best to keep his men steady in the crisis of one of the hardest battles of the Thirty Years' War.
Few of his old playmates would have recognized little Moritz von Arnheim in that bearded face and towering figure; but it was he nevertheless, and the soldiers who were pressing him so hard were men from the very part of Sweden where he had once spent his holidays.
"Forward, my Swedes!" roared a tremendous voice from the other side, and through the rolling smoke in front broke a long line of glittering pike-heads and stern faces, sweeping down upon them like a mighty sea. There was a crash and a terrible cry, and the Austrian ranks were rolled together like leaves before the wind.
Foremost among the Swedes, as they swept onward with a joyous cheer, was a big red-bearded man with the plumed hat of a General, whose face every Austrian leader already knew to his cost.