who brought the daily pittance, scarcely sufficient for the wants of his wretched existence. Albert of Vermandois, a Burgundian youth of high nobility, and yet more exalted renown, had left his native land stung almost to madness by the early death of her to whom he had vowed his affections, and whose name he had already made “glorious by his sword,” from the banks of the Danube to the pillars of Hercules. He had bound the cross upon his breast, he had mortified all worldly desires, all earthly passions, beneath the strict rule of his order. While yet in the flush and pride of manhood, before a gray hair had streaked his dark locks, or a single line wrinkled his lofty brow, he had changed his nature, his heart, his very being; he had attained a height of dignity and fame scarcely equalled by the best and noblest warriors of the temple. The vigor of his arm, the vast scope of his political foresight, no less than the unimpeached rigor of his morals, had long rendered him a glory to his brotherhood, a cause of terror and an engine of defeat to the Saracen lords of the Holy Land. Many a league had been formed to overpower, many a dark plot hatched to inveigle him; but so invariably had he borne down all odds in open warfare before his irresistible lance, so certainly had he hurled back all secret treasons with redoubled vengeance on the heads of the schemers, that he was almost deemed the possessor of some cabalistic spell, framed for the downfall and destruction of the sons of Islam. Deep were the consultations of the infidel leaders concerning the destiny of their formidable captive. The slaughter actually wrought by his hand had been so fearful, the ravages produced among their armies by his policy so unbounded, that a large majority were in favor of his instant execution; nor could human ingenuity devise, or brute cruelty perform, more hellish methods of torture than were calmly discussed in that infuriate assembly. It was late on the third day of his captivity, when the hinges of his dungeon-grate creaked, and a broader glare streamed through the aperture than had hitherto disclosed the secrets of his prisonhouse. The red light streamed from a lamp in the grasp of a dark figure--an imaum, known by his high cap of lambskin, his loose black robes, his parchment cincture, figured with Arabic characters, and the long beard that flowed even below his girdle in unrestrained luxuriance. A negro, bearing food of a better quality, and the beverage abhorred by the prophet, the forbidden juice of the grape, followed--his ivory teeth and the livid circles of his eyes glittering with a ghastly whiteness in the clear lamp-light. He arranged the unaccustomed dainties on the rocky floor: the slave withdrew. The priest seated himself so that the light should reveal every change of the templar’s features, while his own were veiled in deep shadow.