e replacing the ladder used by
Pelayo and his men. We may tell what followed in a few words. Their
terrible defeat cleared the territory of the Austurias of Moslem soldiers.
From every side fugitive Christians left their mountain retreats to seek
the standard of Pelayo. Soon the patriotic and daring leader had an army
under his command, by whom he was chosen king of Christian Spain.

The Moslems made no further attack. They were discouraged by their defeat
and were engaged in a project for the invasion of Gaul that required their
utmost force. Pelayo slowly and cautiously extended his dominions,
descending from the mountains into the plains and valleys, and organizing
his new kingdom in civil as well as in military affairs. All the men under
his control were taught to bear arms, fortifications were built, the
ground was planted, and industry revived. Territory which the Moslems had
abandoned was occupied, and from a group of soldiers in a mountain cavern
a new nation began to emerge.

Pelayo died at Caggas de Onis in the year 737, twenty years after his
great victory. After his death the work he had begun was carried forward,
until by the year 800 the Spanish dominion had extended over much of Old
Castile,--so called from its numerous castles. In a hundred years more it
had extended to the borders of New Castile. The work of reconquest was
slowly but surely under way.

[Illustration: BARONIAL CASTLE IN OLD CASTILE.]

BARONIAL CASTLE IN OLD CASTILE.

THE ADVENTURES OF A FUGITIVE PRINCE.

A new dynasty came to the throne of the caliphs of Damascus in 750. The
line of the Ommeyades, who had held the throne since the days of the
Prophet Mohammed, was overthrown, and the line of the Abbassides began.
Abdullah, the new caliph, bent on destroying every remnant of the old
dynasty, invited ninety of its principal adherents to a banquet, where
they were set upon and brutally murdered. There followed a scene worthy of
a savage. The tables were removed, carpets were spread over the bleeding
corpses, and on these the viands were placed, the guests eating their
dinner to the dismal music of the groans of the dying victims beneath.

The whole country was now scoured for all who were connected with the
fallen dynasty, and wherever found they were brutally slain; yet despite
the vigilance of the murderers a scion of the family of the Ommeyades
escaped. Abdurrahman, the princely y