immediately, the rest by degrees. But the pills did not help him, and he grew worse and worse. They said he was poisoned. Some of the pills were given to a dog, which died after taking them—the story is, however, only told from hearsay, and is probably false. He was brought to Beyrout, where he languished for a few days and then died, in his thirty-third year, leaving no children. Great was the mourning of the people. Other kings had been more powerful in war; none had been braver. Other kings had been more successful; none had so well deserved success. And while his predecessors, one and all, were strangers in the land, Baldwin III. was born and brought up among them all; he knew them all by name, and was courteous and affable to all. In those degenerate days he was almost the only man in the kingdom whose word could be trusted; moreover, he was young, handsome, bright, and generous. The only faults he had were faults common to youth, while from those which most degrade a man in other men’s eyes, gluttony and intemperance, he was entirely free. Even the Saracens loved this free-handed chivalrous prince, and mourned for him. When some one proposed to Nûr-ed-dín to take advantage of the confusion in the country and invade it, he refused, with that stately courtesy which distinguished even the least of the Saracen princes. “Let us,” said he, “have compassion and indulgence for a grief so just, since the Christians have lost a prince such that the world possesses not his equal.” The wiseacres remembered how, when he stood godfather to his brother’s infant son, he gave him his own name, and on being asked what else he would give him, “I will give him,” said the king, with his ready laugh—it was his laugh which the people loved—“I will give him the kingdom of Jerusalem.” The gossips had shaken their heads over words so ominous, and now, with that melancholy pleasure, almost a consolation, which comes of finding your own prognostications of evil correct, they recalled the words of fate and strengthened themselves in their superstition. Ill-omened or not, the words had come true. Baldwin was dead, his brother was to succeed him, and his nephew was to come after. And henceforth the days of the kingdom of Jerusalem are few, and full of trouble.