The credulous air of Syria was favourable to the great mystification in which Lord Montacute was an unconscious agent. It was as fully believed in the mountain, by all the Habeishes and the Eldadahs, the Kazins and the Elvasuds, the Elheires, and the Hai-dars, great Maronite families, as well as by the Druse Djinblats and their rivals, the House of Yezbeck, or the House of Talhook, or the House of Abuneked, that the brother of the Queen of England was a guest at Canobia as it was in the stony wilderness of Petrsea. Ahmet Raslan the Druse and Butros Kerauney the Maronite, who agreed upon no other point, were resolved on this. And was it wonderful, for Butros had already received privately two hundred muskets since the arrival of Tancred, and Raslan had been promised in confidence a slice of the impending English loan by Fakredeen? The extraordinary attention, almost homage, which the Emir paid his guest entirely authorised these convictions, although they could justify no suspicion on the part of Tancred. The natural simplicity of his manners, indeed, and his constitutional reserve, recoiled from the state and ceremony with which he found himself frequently surrounded and too often treated; but Fakredeen peremptorily stopped his remonstrances by assuring him that it was the custom of the country, and that every one present would be offended if a guest of distinction were not entertained with this extreme respect. It is impossible to argue against the customs of a country with which you are not acquainted, but coming home one day from a hawking party, a large assembly of the most influential chieftains, Fakredeen himself bounding on a Kochlani steed, and arrayed in a dress that would have become Solyman the Magnificent, Tancred about to dismount, the Lord of Canobia pushed forward, and, springing from his saddle, insisted on holding the stirrup of Lord Montacute. ‘I cannot permit this,’ said Tancred, reddening, and keeping his seat. ‘If you do not, there is not a man here who will not take it as a personal insult,’ said the Emir, speaking rapidly between his teeth, yet affecting to smile. ‘It has been the custom of the mountain for more than seven hundred years.’ ‘Very strange,’ thought Tancred, as he complied and dismounted.