infinite amusement to Salaman, whose irrepressible laughter added to her fears of being discovered, and increased her trepidation. After this adventure they pursued their course with renewed speed, and arrived without molestation at the outpost, where the guard challenged their advance. Elsiebede presented the monarch's signet saying, "Delay not our errand," and the guard muttering, "There is ever some woman's prank in the light head of the queen," suffered them to pass. As they took their solitary way between the camp and the walls of Acre, Salaman ventured to inquire, "Whither goest thou, Elsiebede?" "I scarce know," replied the girl, in a husky voice, "but this evening there came before King Richard, one who looked upon me with my mother's eyes; and as he left the pavilion, he whispered me in the language of the Gyptianos, 'Meet me when the moon sets, at the tower of Maledictum.'" "This way lieth the tower," said Salaman, drawing her to the right. They now approached the black and frowning walls of Acre, and turning an angle came close upon a small party of Turks sleeping upon the earth, and were challenged in the Moorish tongue. Salaman readily answered in the same language. Mestoc immediately advanced, and taking the hand of Elsiebede led her apart, and a long and earnest conversation ensued. When she returned to Salaman, tears were on her cheek, and hiding her face in her veil, with no other explanation than, "He is the brother of my mother," she led the way back to the royal tent. "Haste thee," said she, thrusting the ring into his hand. "Should the prince awake, we are lost." Salaman sped on his errand, and repeated his perilous adventure with success. Not daring, however, to place the ring upon the monarch's finger, he laid it upon the covering near his hand, and effected a retreat, as far as the anteroom, where he unluckily stumbled against the settle on which rested the guard. The chamberlain instantly started to his feet, and Salaman quick as thought overturned the light, and escaped into the sleeping apartment of the common attendants, but here his progress was arrested by a half-awakened soldier, who seized his ankle and held him fast. Hither as soon as the lamp could be relighted, he was pursued by the chamberlain, but such was the confusion, betwixt the muttering of those unwilling to be disturbed, and the blunders of those who fancied themselves broad awake, such was the cursing of devil, Turk and Infidel, that no one had the faintest idea of what had happened. Scarcely had the chamberlain fixed his eyes upon the real culprit, when with the angry and important air of a responsible person, most unceremoniously wakened, Elsiebede entered, and advancing straight to Salaman, seized and began to shake him with the greatest violence, thus freeing him from the grasp of the guard. "Waken, minion," said she, "waken, I say. What gambols art thou playing again in thy sleep? I warrant me, thou hast an unquiet conscience.