the plain, was soon seen rallying his own scattered cavalry, and pouring
them down, in one general body, upon the scanty remnant of the Spaniards.

"Our day is come!" said the good knight Villena, with bitter resignation.
"Nothing is left for us, my friends, but to give up our lives--an example
how Spanish warriors should live and die. May God and the Holy Mother
forgive our sins and shorten our purgatory!"

Just as he spoke, a clarion was heard at a distance and the sharpened
senses of the knights caught the ring of advancing hoofs.

"We are saved!" cried Estevon de Suzon, rising on his stirrups. While he
spoke, the dashing stream of the Moorish horse broke over the little
band; and Estevon beheld bent upon himself the dark eyes and quivering
lip of Muza Ben Abil Gazan. That noble knight had never, perhaps, till
then known fear; but he felt his heart stand still, as he now stood
opposed to that irresistible foe.

"The dark fiend guides his blade!" thought De Suzon; "but I was shriven
but yestermorn." The thought restored his wonted courage; and he spurred
on to meet the cimiter of the Moor.

His assault took Muza by surprise. The Moor's horse stumbled over the
ground, cumbered with the dead and slippery with blood, and his uplifted
cimiter could not do more than break the force of the gigantic arm of De
Suzon; as the knight's falchion bearing down the cimiter, and alighting
on the turban of the Mohammedan, clove midway through its folds, arrested
only by the admirable temper of the links of steel which protected it.
The shock hurled the Moor to the ground. He rolled under the saddle-
girths of his antagonist.