t his feet, with tears and sighs; and the
crowd gathered round to touch the hem of his robe.

Muza gazed at them in deep disdain, with folded arms and heaving breast.

"Women, not men!" he exclaimed, "ye weep, as if ye had not blood still
left to shed! Ye are reconciled to the loss of liberty, because ye are
told ye shall lose nothing else. Fools and dupes! I see, from the spot
where my spirit stands above ye, the dark and dismal future to which ye
are crawling on your knees: bondage and rapine--the violence of lawless
lust--the persecution of hostile faith--your gold wrung from ye by
torture--your national name rooted from the soil. Bear this, and
remember me! Farewell, Boabdil! you I pity not; for your gardens have
yet a poison, and your armories a sword. Farewell, nobles and santons of
Granada! I quit my country while it is yet free."

Scarcely had he ceased, ere he had disappeared from the hall. It was as
the parting genius of Granada!

CHAPTER IV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY HORSEMAN.

It was a burning and sultry noon, when, through a small valley, skirted
by rugged and precipitous hills, at the distance of several leagues from
Granada, a horseman, in complete armour, wound his solitary way; His
mail was black and unadorned; on his vizor waved no plume. But there
was something in his carriage and mien, and the singular beauty of his
coal-black steed, which appeared to indicate a higher rank than the
absence of page and squire, and the plainness of his accoutrements,
would have denoted to a careless eye. He rode very slowly; and his
steed, with the licence of a spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in
his sultry path, as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging
tree, offered its temptation. At length, as he thus paused, a noise was
heard in a copse that clothed the descent of a steep mountain; and the
horse started suddenly back, forcing the traveller from his reverie.
He looked mechanically upward, and beheld the figure of a man bounding
through the trees, with rapid and irregular 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 enrich