A summer-day in Syria was rapidly drawing toward its close, as a handful of European cavalry, easily recognised by their flat-topped helmets, cumbrous hauberks, and chargers sheathed like their riders, in plate and mail, were toiling their weary way through the deep sand of the desert, scorched almost to the heat of molten lead by the intolerable glare of an eastern sun. Insignificant in numbers, but high of heart, confident from repeated success, elated with enthusiastic valor, and inspiriting sense of a holy cause, they followed the guidance of their leader, one of the best and most tried lances of the temple, careless whither, and secure of triumph; their steel armor glowing like burnished gold, their lance-heads flashing in the level rays of the setting orb, and the party-colored banner of the Beauseant hanging motionless in the still atmosphere. Before them lay an interminable waste of bare and dusty plain, broken into long swells succeeding each other in monotonous regularity, though occasionally varied by stunted patches of thorny shrubs and dwarf palm-trees. As they wheeled round one of these thickets, their commander halted suddenly at the sight of some fifty horsemen, whose fluttering garb and turbaned crowns, as well as the springy pace of their Arab steeds, proclaimed them natives of the soil, winding along the bottom of the valley beneath him, with the stealthy silence of prowling tigers. Although the enemy nearly trebled his own force in numerical power, without a moment’s hesitation Albert of Vermandois arrayed his little band, and before the infidels had even discovered his presence, much less drawn a blade, or concentrated their scattered line, the dreaded war-cry rung upon their ears--“Ha! Beauseant! for the temple! for the temple!” and down thundered the irresistible charge of the western crusaders on their unguarded flank. Not an instant did the Saracens withstand the brunt of the Norman lance; they broke away on all sides, leaving a score of their companions stretched to rise no more on the bloody plain. Scarcely, however, had the victors checked their blown horses, or reorganized their phalanx, disordered by the hot struggle, when the distant clang of cymbal, horn, and kettle-drum mingled with the shrill _lelies_ of the heathen sounding in every direction, announced that their march had been anticipated, their route beset, themselves surrounded. Hastily taking possession of the vantage-ground afforded by an abrupt hillock, and dismissing the lightest of his party to ride for life to the Christian camp, and demand immediate aid, Albert awaited the onset with the stern composure which springs from self-possession. A few minutes sufficed to show the Christians the extent of their embarrassment, and the imminence of their peril. Three heavy masses of cavalry were approaching them from as many different quarters; their gaudy turbans, gilded arms, and waving pennons of a hundred hues, blazing in marked contrast to