She gripped the handle of the axe more tightly, hands clammy.

A moment later, he dropped the axe and ran.

Thus it befell that, of the chiefs of the Howards born since the great Mowbray alliance, two had died by the axe and one in the prison from which a fourth had hardly escaped.

The weapons are the spat ha, or double-bladed German sword, the sax (a short sword, or long knife, semispathium), the knife, shield, and the favorite German axe, though this latter is not found in Bavaria.

The axe was at the close of the prehistoric age a square slab of copper (7) with one sharp edge; small projecting tails then appeared at each end of the back (8), and increased until the long tail for lashing on to the handle is more than half the length of the axe in an iron one of Roman (?) age (13).