Having said this, he retired to the outward cell, probably for
performance of his devotions, and left his guests together in the
inner apartment; when Sir Kenneth endeavoured, by various
questions, to draw from Sheerkohf what that Emir knew concerning
his host. He was interested by more than mere curiosity in these
inquiries. Difficult as it was to reconcile the outrageous
demeanour of the recluse at his first appearance with his present
humble and placid behaviour, it seemed yet more impossible to
think it consistent with the high consideration in which,
according to what Sir Kenneth had learned, this hermit was held
by the most enlightened divines of the Christian world.
Theodorick, the hermit of Engaddi, had, in that character, been
the correspondent of popes and councils; to whom his letters,
full of eloquent fervour, had described the miseries imposed by
the unbelievers upon the Latin Christians in the Holy Land, in
colours scarce inferior to those employed at the Council of
Clermont by the Hermit Peter, when he preached the first Crusade.
To find, in a person so reverend and so much revered, the frantic
gestures of a mad fakir, induced the Christian knight to pause
ere he could resolve to communicate to him certain important
matters, which he had in charge from some of the leaders of the
Crusade.

It had been a main object of Sir Kenneth's pilgrimage, attempted
by a route so unusual, to make such communications; but what he
had that night seen induced him to pause and reflect ere he
proceeded to the execution of his commission. From the Emir he
could not extract much information, but the general tenor was as
follows:--That, as he had heard, the hermit had been once a brave