midnight
And now away . '' The eight young men at once dispersed in various directions . The smith himself shod the Envoy 's horse , and begged him to inform the Archbishop that they would defend the passes of the Eifel while a man of them remained alive . Long before midnight the peasants came straggling to the smithy from all quarters , and by daylight the blacksmith had led them over the volcanic hills to the lip of the tremendous pass through which the Hungarians must come . The sides of this chasm were precipitous and hundreds of feet in height . Even the peasants themselves , knowing the rocks as they did , could not have climbed from the bottom of the pass to the height they now occupied . They had , therefore , no fear that the Hungarians could scale the walls and decimate their scanty band .