Page:The Coming Race, etc - 1888.djvu/263

Rh steps. It was a form that suited well the silence and solitude of the spot; and might have passed for one of those stern recluses—half hermit, half soldier—who, in the earlier crusades, fixed their wild homes amidst the sands and caves of Palestine. The stranger supported his steps by a long staff. His hair and beard hung long and matted over his broad shoulders. A rusted mail, once splendid with arabesque enrichments, protected his breast; but the loose gown a—sort of tartan, which descended below the cuirass—was rent and tattered, and his feet bare; in his girdle was a short curved cimeter, a 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," sard 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 cimeter: "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!"

"No, no," muttered Muza, sinking his lance;" thy mail is rusted with the blood of the Spaniard, and this arm cannot smite the slayer of the Christian. Part we in peace."

"Hold, prince!" said Almamen, in an altered voice: "is thy country the sole thing dear to thee? Has the smile of woman never stolen beneath thine armour? Has thy heart never beat for softer meetings than the encounter of a foe?"

"Am I human, and a Moor?" returned Musa. "For once you