As he speaks, he lifts his arm to remove his casque, and behold, his striped scarf has vanished. “Alas! how have I lost it?” he cries in much distress. “I must have dropped it but a moment ago. Now, I would rather fight ten battles than lose that scarf. My liege lady worked it for me and bound it on my arm long ago, and there I have worn it ever since. Find it I will, or I will die for it.” As he speaks Don Garcia turns himself round in his saddle unhelmeted as he is, his hair flying in the breeze, and gazes eagerly upon the path by which he has come, a track upon the greensward. Then for the first time he raises his eyes upon the Moors, seven knights ranged in a line, wearing green turbans on their helmets and carrying lances in their hands; and there, suspended upon the point of a spear, is his scarf striped white and red--a Moslem has picked it up and looped it there. “Now, by my faith!” says Garcia, considering them with a frown, “these are uncourteous enemies. Folks say the unbelievers exceed us in that quality, but it is not so. They have come out to steal, these Moslem dogs. They shall pay for it. No Moor that ever lived shall ride back into Seville and call that scarf his own! Come on, ye thieves and robbers! give me my lady’s token!” As he speaks, Don Garcia falls upon them and hacks and hews them with such deadly blows right and left, that ere much time is passed such as are not dead are scouring the plain to Seville. Fernando, watching anxiously from the hill, still sees Don Garcia on the plain. Again he is alone, now he is fastening the scarf, which his esquire has unloosed from the Moorish spear, securely upon his arm. Then, humming a roundelay, he girds his sword, streaming with blood, upon his thigh, and turning his horse’s head towards the Christian camp, rides gaily up the hill, four green-turbaned heads dangling from his saddle-bow. Meanwhile the jefe is telling the king a pleasant tale of Don Garcia’s brother, Don Diego de Varga, who, having snapped his sword in the heat of an engagement outside Xerez, tore up by the roots a wild olive-tree, and laid about him with such fury among the Moors, that to this day he is known by the name of _El Machuca_ (the Pounder). * * * * * For sixteen months the Caliph Azataff gallantly defended the walls of Seville, but before an army of such chivalric knights and a king prepared for canonisation, what city could hope to stand?