The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: His daughter, having done all she could for his accommodation,
stood motionless beside him, divided between anxiety for his
health, and for the event of the combat to her beloved brother.
Ere yet the fight began, the old men gazed on their chief, now
seen for the first time after several years, and sadly compared
his altered features and wasted frame with the paragon of
strength and manly beauty which they once remembered. The young
men gazed on his large form and powerful make as upon some
antediluvian giant who had survived the destruction of the Flood.
But the sound of the trumpets on both sides recalled the
attention of every one to the lists, surrounded as they were by
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