It was starlight on Galilee. The placid lake lay at the feet, slumbering as calmly as an infant, with the wooded shores, and the tall cliffs around, reflected darkly in its surface. Scarcely a breath disturbed the quiet air. Occasionally a ripple would break on the shore with a low, measured harmony, and anon a tiny wave would glisten in the starlight, as a slight breeze ruffled the surface of the lake. The song of the fisherman was hushed; the voice of the vine-dresser had ceased on the shore; the cry of the eagle had died away amongst his far-off hills, and the silence of midnight, deep, hushed, and awe-inspiring, hung over Galilee.
A thousand years before, and what scenes had that sea beheld! There, had lived Peter and his brethren; there, had our Saviour taught; upon those shores had his miracles been wrought; and on the broad bosom of Gennesserat he had walked a God. What holy memories were linked in with that little sea! How calm and changeless seemed its quiet depths! A thousand years had passed since then, and the apostles and their children had mouldered into dust, yet the stars still looked down on that placid lake unchanged, shining the same as they had done for fifty centuries before.
On the shore of the lake, embowered in the thick woods, stood a large old, rambling fortified building, bearing traces of the Roman architecture, upon which had been engrafted a Saracenic style. It enclosed a garden, upon one side of which was a range of low buildings, dark, massy, frowning, and partly in ruins, but which bore every evidence of being still almost impregnable.
Within this range of buildings, in a dark and noisome cell, reclined, upon a scanty bed of straw, a Christian knight. His face was pale and attenuated, but it had lost, amid all his sufferings, none of his high resolve. It was now the seventh day since he had lain in that loathsome dungeon, and the morrow’s sun was to see him die a martyr, for not abjuring his religion.
“Yes!” he muttered to himself, “the agony will soon be over: it is but an hour at the most, and shall a Christian knight fear fire or torture? No: come when it may, death should ever be welcome to a de Guiscan; and how much more welcome when it brings the glories of martyrdom. But yet it is a fearful trial. I could fall in battle, for there a thousand eyes behold us, but to die alone, unheard of, with only foes around, and where none shall ever hear of my fate.—Oh! that indeed is bitter. Yet I fear not even it. Thank God!” he said, fervently kissing a cross he drew from his bosom, “there is a strength given to us in the hour of need, which bears us up against every danger.”
The speaker suddenly started, ceased, and looked around. The bolt of his door was being withdrawn from the outside. Could it be that his jailor was about to visit him at this hour? Slowly the massy door swung on its hinges, and a burst of light, streaming into the cell, for a moment dazzled the eyes of the captive; but when he grew accustomed gradually to the glare, he started, with even greater surprise, to behold, not his jailor, but a maiden, richly attired in the Oriental dress. For an instant the young knight looked amazed, as if he beheld a being of another world.
“Christian!” said the apparition, using the mongrel tongue, then adopted by both Saracens and Franks in their communications, but speaking in a low, sweet voice, which, melting from the maiden’s tongue, made every word seem musical, “do you die to-morrow?”
“If God wills it,” said the young knight firmly, “but what mean you?—why are you here?”
“I am here to save you,” said the maiden, fixing her eye upon his, “that is,” and she paused and blushed in embarrassment, “if you will comply with my conditions.”
The young knight, who had eagerly started forward at the first part of her sentence, now recoiled, and with a firm voice, though one gentler than he would have used to aught less fair, exclaimed,—