He could distinguish even the hairs on the rat and suddenly another impulse came over him--the impulse to stoop down and catch the long-tailed vermin in his beak and claws.

Wendelin had been changed into a falcon, and the rat struggled in vain to escape his powerful attack.
The prisoner had followed the combat first with anxiety, then with joy.
While the falcon held the rat in his claws and struck him with his beak again and again, she called the squire to her, and bade him free her from her chains.

This was no distasteful task for George, indeed it gave him so much pleasure that he was in no hurry to finish.
When at last all her bonds were loosened, she stood very erect, and lifted her arms, and each moment seemed to make her more lovely and more beautiful.

Then she grasped the circle of emeralds, about which the enchanter had wound her golden hair, and waving it high in the air, cried: "Falcon, return to the shape you were before.

Misdral, hear thy sentence!" Wendelin assumed immediately his knightly guise, which seemed very clumsy to him after having been a falcon.