knife or dagger, and a parchment roll, clasped and bound with iron.

As the horseman gazed at this abrupt intruder on the solitude, his frame
quivered with emotion; and, raising himself to his full height, he called
aloud, "Fiend or santon--whatsoever thou art--what seekest thou in these
lonely places, far from the king thy counsels deluded, and the city
betrayed by thy false prophecies and unhallowed charms?"

"Ha!" cried Almamen, for it was indeed the Israelite; "by thy black
charger, and the tone of thy haughty voice, I know the hero of Granada.
Rather, Muza Ben Abil Gazan, why art thou absent from the last hold of
the Moorish empire?"

"Dost thou pretend to read the future, and art thou blind to the present?
Granada has capitulated to the Spaniard. Alone I have left a land of
slaves, and shall seek, in our ancestral Africa, some spot where the
footstep of the misbeliever hath not trodden."

"The fate of one bigotry is, then, sealed," said Almamen, gloomily; "but
that which succeeds it is yet more dark."

"Dog!" cried Muza, couching his lance, "what art thou that thus
blasphemest?"

"A Jew!" replied Almamen, in a voice of thunder, and drawing his cimiter:
"a despised and despising Jew! Ask you more? I am the son of a race of
kings. I was the worst enemy of the Moors till I found the Nazarene more
hateful than the Moslem; and then even Muza himself was not their more
renowned champion. Come on, if thou wilt--man to man: I defy thee"