Hasty and fierce was Kenneth's answer. "No, by the bright light
of Heaven! If the King of England had not set forth to the
Crusade till he was sovereign of Scotland, the Crescent might,
for me, and all true-hearted Scots, glimmer for ever on the walls
of Zion."

Thus far he had proceeded, when, suddenly recollecting himself,
he muttered, "MEA CULPA! MEA CULPA! what have I, a soldier of
the Cross, to do with recollection of war betwixt Christian
nations!"

The rapid expression of feeling corrected by the dictates of duty
did not escape the Moslem, who, if he did not entirely understand
all which it conveyed, saw enough to convince him with the
assurance that Christians, as well as Moslemah, had private
feelings of personal pique, and national quarrels, which were not
entirely reconcilable. But the Saracens were a race, polished,
perhaps, to the utmost extent which their religion permitted, and
particularly capable of entertaining high ideas of courtesy and
politeness; and such sentiments prevented his taking any notice
of the inconsistency of Sir Kenneth's feelings in the opposite
characters of a Scot and a Crusader.

Meanwhile, as they advanced, the scene began to change around
them. They were now turning to the eastward, and had reached the
range of steep and barren hills which binds in that quarter the
naked plain, and varies the surface of the country, without
changing its sterile character. Sharp, rocky eminences began to
rise around them, and, in a short time, deep declivities and
ascents, both formidable in height and difficult from the