Then dismissing the matter with a wave of his hand, he turned to receive a great body of Christian prisoners that, panting and stumbling like over-driven sheep, were being thrust on towards the camp with curses, blows and mockery by the victorious Saracens. Among them the brethren rejoiced to see Egbert, the gentle and holy bishop of Nazareth, whom they had thought dead. Also, wounded in many places, his hacked harness hanging about him like a beggar’s rags, there was the black-browed Master of the Templars, who even now could be fierce and insolent. “So I was right,” he mocked in a husky voice, “and here you are, safe with your friends the Saracens, Sir Knights of the visions and the water-skins—” “From which you were glad enough to drink just now,” said Godwin. “Also,” he added sadly, “all the vision is not done.” And turning, he looked towards a blazoned tent which with the Sultan’s great pavilion, and not far behind it, was being pitched by the Arab camp-setters. The Master saw and remembered Godwin’s vision of the dead Templars. “Is it there that you mean to murder me, traitor and wizard?” he asked. Then rage took hold of Godwin and he answered him: “Were it not for your plight, here and now I would thrust those words down your throat, as, should we both live, I yet shall hope to do. You call us traitors. Is it the work of traitors to have charged alone through all this host until our horses died beneath us?”—he pointed to where Smoke and Flame lay with glazing eyes—“to have unhorsed Saladin and to have slain this prince in single combat?” and he turned to the body of the emir Hassan, which his servants were carrying away. “You speak of me as wizard and murderer,” he went on, “because some angel brought me a vision which, had you believed it, Templar, would have saved tens of thousands from a bloody death, the Christian kingdom from destruction, and yonder holy thing from mockery,” and with a shudder he glanced at the Rood which its captors had set up upon a rock not far away with a dead knight tied to its black arms. “You, Sir Templar, are the murderer who by your madness and ambition have brought ruin on the cause of Christ, as was foretold by the count Raymond.” “That other traitor who also has escaped,” snarled the Master. Then Saracen guards dragged him away, and they were parted. By now the pavilion was up and Saladin entered it, saying: “Bring before me the king of the Franks and prince Arnat, he who is called Reginald of Chatillon.” Then a thought struck him, and he called to Godwin and Wulf, saying: “Sir Knights, you know our tongue; give up your swords to the officer—they shall be returned to you—and come, be my interpreters.”