“And he spake sooth, but he did not see me rise again. I was carried off the field for interment by the good brethren of Saint John, when, just as they were about to lower me with the dead warriors into one common grave, they perceived that there was life in me. They raised me, and restored the spirit which had all but fled, and when at last it returned, reason did not return with it. For a full year I was bereft of my senses. They kept me in the hospital at Acre, but they knew nought, and could learn nought of my kindred, until at length I recovered my reason. Then I told them I was dead to the world, and besought them to keep me, but they bade me wander, and stir up others to the rescue of the Holy Land ere I took my rest. And then, too, there was my son—” “Thy SON?” “Yes. I see I had better unfold all to thee in detail, from the beginning of my wanderings. After I had fled from my father’s wrath, I first went to sunny Provence, where I found friends in the great family of the Montforts, and won the friendship of a man who has since become famous, the Earl of Leicester. A distant kinswoman of theirs, a cousin many times removed, effaced from my heart the fickle damsel who had been the cause of my disgrace in England. Poor Eveline! Never was there sweeter face or sunnier disposition! Had she lived all had been well. I had not then gone forth, abandoned to my own sinful self. But she died in giving birth to my Hubert.” “Thy son, doth he yet live?” “I left him in the care of Simon de Montfort, and went forward to the rendezvous of the crusaders, the Isle of Malta, where, being grievously insulted by a Frenchman—during a truce of God, which had been proclaimed to the whole army—forgot all but my hot blood, struck him, thereby provoked a combat, and slew him, for which I was expelled the host, and forbidden to share in the holy war. “So I sailed thence to Sicily—in deep dejection, repenting, all too late, my ungovernable spirit. “It was in the Isle of Sicily that an awful judgment befell me, which has pursued me ever since, until it has blanched my locks with gray, and hollowed out these wrinkles on my brow. “I had taken up my quarters at an inn, and was striving in vain to drown my remorse in utter recklessness, in wine and mirth, when one night, as I lay half unconscious in bed, I heard the door open. I started up and laid my hand on my sword, but melted into a sweat of fear as I saw the ghost of him I had slain, standing as if in life, his hand upon the wound my blade had made. “‘Nay,’ said he, ‘mortal weapons harm me not now, but see that thou fulfil for me the vow I have made. Carry my sword in person or by proxy to Jerusalem, and lay it on the altar of the Holy Sepulchre. Then I forgive thee my death.’