"Then Charles cried, 'Who will stop that devil, whom no steel can wound?
Help us, O blessed martyr St. Trophimus, and save the soldiers of the
Cross from shame!'
"Then cried Torfrid, my forefather, 'What use in crying to St. Trophimus?
He could not help himself, when the Paynim burnt him: and how can he help
us? A tough arm is worth a score of martyrs here.'
"And he rode at that Emir, and gript him in his arms. They both fell, and
rolled together on the ground; but Torfrid never loosed his hold till he
had crushed out his unbaptized soul and sent it to join Mahound in hell.
"Then he took his armor, and brought it home in triumph. But after a while
he fell sick of a fever; and the blessed St. Trophimus appeared to him,
and told him that it was a punishment for his blasphemy in the battle. So
he repented, and vowed to serve the saint all his life. On which he was
healed instantly, and fell to religion, and went back to Montmajeur; and
there he was a hermit in the cave under the rock, and tended the graves
hewn in the living stone, where his old comrades, the Paladins who were
slain, sleep side by side round the church of the Holy Cross. But the
armor he left here; and he laid a curse upon it, that whosoever of his
descendants should lose that armor in fight, should die childless, without
a son to wield a sword.
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