ed him, by every holy word and sign, to stop the execution.

"Now, by both sword and sceptre," said Richard, "the world is leagued to
drive me mad!--fools, women, and monks cross me at every step. How comes
he to live still?"

"My gracious liege," said the monk, "I entreated of the Lord of Gilsland
to stay the execution until I had thrown myself at your royal--"

"And he was wilful enough to grant thy request," said the King; "but
it is of a piece with his wonted obstinacy. And what is it thou hast to
say? Speak, in the fiend's name!"

"My lord, there is a weighty secret, but it rests under the seal of
confession. I dare not tell or even whisper it; but I swear to thee
by my holy order, by the habit which I wear, by the blessed Elias, our
founder, even him who was translated without suffering the ordinary
pangs of mortality, that this youth hath divulged to me a secret, which,
if I might confide it to thee, would utterly turn thee from thy bloody
purpose in regard to him."

"Good father," said Richard, "that I reverence the church, let the arms
which I now wear for her sake bear witness. Give me to know this secret,
and I will do what shall seem fitting in the matter. But I am no
blind Bayard, to take a leap in the dark under the stroke of a pair of
priestly spurs."

"My lord," said the holy man, throwing back his cowl and upper vesture,
and discovering under the latter a garment of goatskin, and from beneath
the former a visage so wildly wasted by climate, fast, and penance, as
to resemble rather the apparition of an animated skeleton than a human
face, "for twenty years have I macerated this miserable body in the
caverns of Engaddi, doing penance for a great crime. Think you I, who am
dead to the world, would contrive a falsehood to endanger my own soul;
or that one, bound by the most sacred oaths to the contrary--one such
as I, who have but one longing wish connected with earth, to wit,
the rebuilding of our Christian Zion--would betray the secrets of the
confessional? Both are alike abhorrent to my very soul."

"So," answered the King, "thou art that hermit of whom men speak so
much? Thou art, I confess, like enough to those spirits which walk in
dry places; but Richard fears no hobgoblins. And thou art he, too, as
I bethink me, to whom the Christian princes sent this very criminal to
open a communication with the Soldan, even while I, who ought to have
been first consulted, lay on my sick-bed? Thou and they