possessions on shore, but who in their fleet vessels, accompanied by brave and faithful soldiers, sail about through all quarters of the world, from the distant icebergs of the north to the brilliant city of Constantinople, or even to the shores of Asia and Africa, with their mines of gold. In truth, there are scarcely any mariners that know their way so well, and where, on account of their great excellence in the arts of warfare, they can exercise unlimited power.” Sir Folko might have narrated still farther, and the party listened to him willingly; but they already heard the steps of the wonderful stranger on the staircase, and the eyes of every one were fixed on the portal. END OF VOL. I. * * * * * PRINTED BY OLIVER & BOYD. * * * * * Transcriber’s note: Punctuation errors and printing mistakes such as obviously missing letters have been silently fixed. Spelling and hyphenation in common use at the time of publication have been kept as is. Instances of the same word differing in hyphenation have in most cases been changed to match the majority variant, or using information from other sources. Volume number added under “The Magic Ring”, before the first chapter. The footnote has been relocated to the end of the chapter to better fit the ebook format. In addition, the following changes have been made: p.xiii: FOUQUE to FOUQUÉ p.75: Mountfaucon to Montfaucon p.226: chesnut to chestnut P.242: humilitud to humilitude P.247, 277, and 282: Allessandro to Alessandro New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.