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But me in death may the heaped-up earth be covering, ere I hear thy crying and thy carrying into captivity." So spake glorious Hector, and stretched out his arm to his boy. But the child shrunk crying to the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse, dismayed at his dear father's aspect, and in dread at the bronze and horse-hair crest that he beheld nodding fiercely from the helmet's top.
It was a figure armed as for a tourney, in gleaming steel from head to foot, girt with a sword, the right hand resting upon the hilt of the heavy dagger in the girdle. The helmet's vizor was raised, revealing the ghastly face of Ruthven so ghastly that it must have seemed the face of a dead man but for the blazing life in the eyes that scanned the company.
But that helmet of yours, as I took care should be just right for a boy, is too light altogether." "Bah!" cried Marcus. "Why, it has made my forehead and the back just behind my ears as sore as sore." "Pooh! That isn't because the helmet's too heavy; it's on account of your head being so soft and green. It'll be hard enough before the end of this war.
But the child shrunk crying to the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse, dismayed at the look of his dear father and in fear of the bronze and the horsehair crest that nodded fiercely from his helmet's top.
"When he whangs the table, and says do they think his helmet's an old woman's bunnit, an' all the rest of it, I tell ye that's some, Miss Hildy!" "You have the spirit of the verse, Bubble," said Hilda, laughing softly; "but the words are not quite right."
"Good!" he cried. "Well done, boy!" And he began to sheath his sword. "Your teacher, an old hand, no doubt, could not have done better. Why, boy," he continued, "you are a soldier, every inch," and he grasped the lad by both arms. "But this won't do; you must lay on muscle here, and thicken and deepen in the chest. That helmet's too heavy for you too.
From where the woman stood at the window she could make out the round, white, mushroom top of a policeman's summer helmet as its wearer leaned back, half sheltered under the narrow portico of the stoop just below her; and she could see his uniform sleeve and his hand, covered with a white cotton glove, come up, carrying a handkerchief, and mop the hidden face under the helmet's brim.
Dear Caballuco, seeing you, seeing your bravery and your nobility, there come to my mind involuntarily the verses of that ballad on the conquest of the Empire of Trebizond: "'Came the valiant Roland Armed at every point, On his war-horse mounted, The gallant Briador; His good sword Durlindana Girded to his side, Couched for the attack his lance, On his arm his buckler stout, Through his helmet's visor Flashing fire he came; Quivering like a slender reed Shaken by the wind his lance, And all the host united Defying haughtily."
The country's annuitants had for type 'the figure with the helmet of the Owl-Goddess and the trident of the Earth-shaker, seated on a wheel, at the back of penny-pieces; in whom you see neither the beauty of nakedness nor the charm of drapery; not the helmet's dignity or the trident's power; but she has patently that which stops the wheel; and poseing for representative of an imperial nation, she helps to pass a penny. So he passed his epigram, heedless of the understanding or attention of his hearer; who temporarily misjudged him for a man impelled by the vanity of literary point and finish, when indeed it was hot satiric spite, justified of its aim, which crushed a class to extract a drop of scathing acid, in the interests of the country, mankind as well.
His companion was some ten years older; his beard and curling hair, worn away from his forehead by the helmet's chafing, were already sprinkled with gray. He had a great beak of a nose and dark-gray eyes, as keen as a hawk's, and a look of amazing life and vim. The air about him seemed to tingle with it.
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