s, and four-and-
twenty silver dishes. As he was too powerful to be successfully
resisted, Tancred yielded to his demands; and then the French King grew
jealous, and complained that the English King wanted to be absolute in
the Island of Messina and everywhere else. Richard, however, cared
little or nothing for this complaint; and in consideration of a present
of twenty thousand pieces of gold, promised his pretty little nephew
ARTHUR, then a child of two years old, in marriage to Tancred's daughter.
We shall hear again of pretty little Arthur by-and-by.

This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains being knocked out
(which must have rather disappointed him), King Richard took his sister
away, and also a fair lady named BERENGARIA, with whom he had fallen in
love in France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor (so long in prison,
you remember, but released by Richard on his coming to the Throne), had
brought out there to be his wife; and sailed with them for Cyprus.

He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King of the Island of Cyprus,
for allowing his subjects to pillage some of the English troops who were
shipwrecked on the shore; and easily conquering this poor monarch, he
seized his only daughter, to be a companion to the lady Berengaria, and
put the King himself into silver fetters. He then sailed away again with
his mother, sister, wife, and the captive princess; and soon arrived
before the town of Acre, which the French King with his fleet was
besieging from the sea. But the French King was in no triumphant
condition, for his army had been thinned by the swords of the Saracens,
and wasted by the plague; and SALADIN, the brave Sultan of the Turks, at
the head of a numerous army, was at that time gallantly defending the
place from the hills that rise above it.

Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they agreed in few points
except in gaming, drinking, and quarrelling, in a most unholy manner; in
debauching the people among whom they tarried, whether they were friends
or foes; and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet places. The
French King was jealous of the English King, and the English King was
jealous of the French King, and the disorderly and violent soldiers of
the two nations were jealous of one another; consequently, the two Kings
could not at first agree, even upon a joint assault on Acre; but when
they did make up their quarrel for that purpose, the Saracens promised to
yield t