The pause was of short duration. With a rustle like the voice of the forest when the first breath of the rising tempest agitates its shivering foliage, the multitude rose to their feet. A gallant horseman dashed from the cavalcade which thronged around the person of their sultan, checked his steed beside the archer-band, spoke a few hasty words, and galloped back to his station. Another minute--and arrow after arrow whistled from the Paynim bows, piercing the limbs and even grazing the body of the templar; but not a murmur escaped from the victim--scarcely did a frown contract his brow. There was an irradiation, as if of celestial happiness, upon his countenance; nor could a spectator have imagined for a moment that his whole frame was almost convulsed with agony, but for the weapons quivering even to their feathered extremities in every joint, and the large blood-drops trickling like rain upon the thirsty soil! Again there was a pause. Circled by his Nubian guard, and followed by the bravest and the brightest of his court, the sultan himself rode up to the bleeding crusader. Yet, even there, decked with all the pomp of royalty and pride of war, goodly in person, and sublime in bearing, the monarch of the East was shamed--shamed like a slave before his master--by the native majesty of Christian virtue; nor could the prince at first find words to address the tortured mortal who stood at his feet with the serene deportment which would have beseemed the judge upon his tribunal no less than the martyr at the stake. “Has the Nazarene yet learned experience from the bitter sting of adversity? The skill of the leech may yet assuage thy wounds, and the honors which shall be poured upon thee may yet efface thine injuries--even as the rich grain conceals in its luxuriance the furrows of the ploughshare! Will the Nazarene live? or will he die the death of a dog?” “The Lord is on my side,” was the low but firm reply--“the Lord is on my side: I will not fear what man doeth unto me!” On swept the monarch’s train, and again the iron shower fell fast and fatally--not as before, on the members, but on the broad chest and manly trunk. The blood gushed forth in blacker streams; the warrior’s life was ebbing fast away--when from the rear of the broken hills a sudden trumpet blew a point of war in notes so thrilling, that it pierced the ears like the thrust of some sharp weapon. Before the astonishment of the crowd had time to vent itself in word or deed, the eminences were crowded with the mail-clad myriads of the Christian forces! Down they came, like the blast of the tornado on some frail and scattered fleet, with war-cry, and the clang of instruments, and the thick trampling of twice ten thousand hoofs. Wo to the sons of the desert in that hour! They were swept away before the mettled steeds and levelled lances of the templars like dust before the wind, or stubble before the devouring flame!