h their disorders to be of any service.'

Soon after witnessing this harrowing spectacle, Joinville was requested
by the Saracen admiral to mount a palfrey; and they rode together, over
a bridge, to the place where the Crusaders were imprisoned. At the
entrance of a large pavilion the good Saracen, who had been Joinville's
preserver, and had always followed him about, stopped, and requested his
attention.

'Sir,' said he, 'you must excuse me, but I cannot come further. I
entreat you not to quit the hand of this boy, otherwise the Saracens
will kill him.'

'Who is he?' asked Joinville.

'The boy's name,' replied the good Saracen, 'is Bartholomew de Bar, and
he is son of the Lord Montfaucon de Bar.'

And now conducted by the admiral, and leading the little boy by the
hand, Joinville entered the pavilion, where the nobles and knights of
France, with more than ten thousand persons of inferior rank, were
confined in a court, large in extent, and surrounded by walls of mud.
From this court the captive Christians were led forth, one at a time,
and asked if they would become renegades, yes or no. He who answered
'Yes,' was put aside; but he who answered 'No,' was instantly beheaded.

Such was the plight of the Christian warriors who so recently had
boasted of being about to conquer Egypt. Already thirty thousand of the
Crusaders had perished; and the survivors were so wretched, that they
almost envied their comrades who had gone where the weary are at rest.

Now in the midst of all this suffering and anxiety, what had become of
Guy Muschamp? Had the gay young squire, who boasted that if killed by
the Saracens he would die laughing, been drowned in the Nile, or was he
a captive in that large court surrounded by walls of mud? Neither. But
as our narrative proceeds, the reader will see that Guy Muschamp's fate
was hardly less sad than the fate of those who had found a watery grave,
or of those who were offered the simple choice of denying their God or
losing their lives.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

NEWS OF DISASTER.

WHILE Louis of France and his nobles and knights were exposed to such
danger at the hands of their enemies, from whom they had no reason to
expect forbearance, Queen Margaret remained at Damietta, with her
ladies, expecting to hear of battles won and fortresses taken. At
length, one morning about sunrise, a strange and heart-rending cry
resounded through the city, and reached the ears of the queen in her
pa