It wanted a full hour of the appointed time for the trial, when the swarming camp poured forth its many-tongued multitudes to the tiltyard. The volatile Frenchman, the proud and taciturn Castilian, the resolute Briton, and the less courtly knights of the German empire, crowded to the spot. It was a vast enclosure, surrounded with palisades, and levelled with the greatest care, for the exhibition of that martial skill on which the crusaders set so high a value, and provided with elevated seats for the judges of the games--now to be applied to a more important and awful decision. The vast multitude was silent, every feeling absorbed in breathless expectation; every brow was knit, and every heart was quivering with that sickening impatience which makes us long to know all that is concealed from our vision by the dark clouds of futurity, even if that all be the worst-- “The dark and hideous close, Even to intolerable woes!” This expectation had already reached its highest pitch, when, as the sun reared his broad disk in a flood of radiance above the level horizon of the desert, a mournful and wailing blast of trumpets announced the approach of the judges. Arrayed in their robes of peace, with their knightly belts and spurs, rode the whilome monarch of Jerusalem, and the noblest chiefs of every different nation which had united to form one army under the guidance of one commander. Prelates, and peers, and knights--all who had raised themselves above the mass, in which all were brave and noble, by distinguished talents of either war or peace--had been convoked to sit in judgment on a cause which concerned no less the welfare of the holy church and the interests of religion than the discipline and laws of war. The peers of France and England, and the dignitaries of the empire, many of whom were present, although their respective kings had not yet reached the shores of Palestine--were clad in their robes and caps of maintenance, the knights in the surcoats and collars of their orders, and the prelates in all the splendor of pontifical decoration. A strong body of knights, whose rank did not as yet entitle them to seats in the council, were marshalled like pillars of steel, in full caparison of battle, around the listed field, to prevent the escape of the prisoner, no less than to guard his person from premature violence, had such been attempted by the enthusiastic and indignant concourse.