before you? But time may change you. At any rate for the present your
doom is postponed."

He turned to a gorgeously-dressed noble next to him, and said,--

"Your brother, Ben Abin, is Governor of Jerusalem, and the gardens of
the palace are fair. Take this youth to him as a present, and set him to
work in his gardens. His life I have spared, in all else Ben Abin will
be his master."

Cuthbert heard without emotion the words which changed his fate from
death to slavery. Many, he knew, who were captured in these wars were
carried away as slaves to different parts of Asia, and it did not seem to
him that the change was in any way a boon. However, life is dear, and it
was but natural that a thought should leap into his heart that soon
either the crusaders might force a way into Jerusalem and there rescue
him, or that he himself might in some way escape.

The sultan having thus concluded the subject, turned away, and galloped
off surrounded by his body-guard.

Those who had captured the Christians now stripped off the armour of
Cuthbert; then he was mounted on a bare-backed steed, and with four
Bedouins, with their long lances, riding beside him, started for
Jerusalem. After a day of long and rapid riding, the Arabs stopped
suddenly, on the crest of a hill, with a shout of joy, and throwing
themselves from their horses, bent with their foreheads to the earth at
the sight of their holy city. Cuthbert, as he gazed at the stately walls
of Jerusalem, and the noble buildings within, felt bitterly that it was
not thus that he had hoped to see the holy city. He had dreamt of