courtyard enclosed by a wall of grey-coloured mud bricks, out of some
of which stuck pieces of straw. This courtyard opened onto a narrow
street where many oddly-clothed people walked up and down, some of
whom wore peaked caps. A little man, old and grey, sat with the
fragment of black rock on a low table before him, which Godfrey knew
to be the same stone that he had already seen. By him lay graving
tools, and he was engaged in polishing the stone, now covered with
figures and writing, by help of a stick, a piece of rough cloth and
oil. A young man with a curly beard walked into the little courtyard,
and to him the old fellow delivered the engraved stone with
obeisances, receiving payment in some curious currency.

Then followed picture upon picture in all of which the talisman
appeared in the hands of sundry of its owners. Some of these pictures
had to do with love, some with religious ceremonies, and some with
war. One, too, with its sale, perhaps in a time of siege or scarcity,
for a small loaf of black-looking bread, by an aged woman who wept at
parting with it.

After this he saw an Arab-looking man finding the stone amongst the
crumbling remains of a brick wall that showed signs of having been
burnt, which wall he was knocking down with a pick-axe to allow water
to flow down an irrigation channel on his garden. Presently a person
who wore a turban and was girt about with a large scimitar, rode by,
and to him the man showed, and finally presented the stone, which the
Saracen placed in the folds of his turban.

The next scene was of this man engaged in battle with a knight clad in
mail. The battle was a very fine one, which Godfrey described with
much gusto. It ended in the knight killing the Eastern man and hacking