sin."

The Saracen listened with some surprise, and then replied, with
good-humour and gaiety, only so far repressed as courtesy required,
"Good Sir Kenneth, methinks you deal unequally by your companion, or
else ceremony is but indifferently taught amongst your Western tribes.
I took no offence when I saw you gorge hog's flesh and drink wine, and
permitted you to enjoy a treat which you called your Christian liberty,
only pitying in my heart your foul pastimes. Wherefore, then, shouldst
thou take scandal, because I cheer, to the best of my power, a gloomy
road with a cheerful verse? What saith the poet, 'Song is like the
dews of heaven on the bosom of the desert; it cools the path of the
traveller.'"

"Friend Saracen," said the Christian, "I blame not the love of
minstrelsy and of the GAI SCIENCE; albeit, we yield unto it even too
much room in our thoughts when they should be bent on better things.
But prayers and holy psalms are better fitting than LAIS of love, or of
wine-cups, when men walk in this Valley of the Shadow of Death, full of
fiends and demons, whom the prayers of holy men have driven forth
from the haunts of humanity to wander amidst scenes as accursed as
themselves."

"Speak not thus of the Genii, Christian," answered the Saracen, "for
know thou speakest to one whose line and nation drew their origin from
the immortal race which your sect fear and blaspheme."

"I well thought," answered the Crusader, "that your blinded race had
their descent from the foul fiend, without whose aid you would never
have been able to maintain this blessed land of Palestine against so
many valiant soldiers of God. I speak not thus of thee in particular,
Saracen, but generally of thy people and religion. Strange is it to me,
however, not that you should have the descent from the Evil One, but
that you should boast of it."

"From whom should the bravest boast of descending, saving from him that
is bravest?" said the Saracen; "from whom should the proudest trace
their line so well as from the Dark Spirit, which would rather fall
headlong by force than bend the knee by his will? Eblis may be hated,
stranger, but he must be feared; and such as Eblis are his descendants
of Kurdistan."

Tales of magic and of necromancy were the learning of the period, and
Sir Kenneth heard his companion's confession of diabolical descent
without any disbelief, and without much wonder; yet not without a secret
shudder at finding himself in