e! and coming in his place three yelping,
delighted dogs were jumping about on me. I'm afraid I called those
setters names which they must have thought very rude; I kicked at them
and abused them; gradually they realised that I was not quite the nice
fellow they had thought me.

[Illustration: "King Louis leaped fully armed into the sea."]

I learnt later that a furious neighbour of Michael's, annoyed by their
night-long barking, had opened the stable-door and let them out. But the
bear--alas! I never saw him again; he left the place in sore
dudgeon--so that the peasants saved the remains left to put up with
certain rude remarks from my cousin Jack. I believe he thought these
remarks humorous, but I assure you they were not in the least funny.

STORIES FROM AFRICA.

I.--THE STORY OF A CRUSADER.

[Illustration]

A very long time ago a wise man said that there was always something new
to be found in Africa. The Africa he knew was only that fringe of the
dark continent into which the Roman arms had penetrated, but in our
days, as in his, there is a charm about the stories from that mysterious
land of which we have even now so much to learn. There are the
travellers' tales of men who went where no white foot had trodden before
them, fighting tales of men who won honour at the sword's point, and
tales, just as stirring, of those who carried only the message of peace.
The names of Livingstone and Gordon, Mackenzie and Hannington, should be
household words in every English home, and there are others less known
of whom there are stories worth the hearing.

And our first tale is told by an old French baron, aged eighty years or
more, ending his life peacefully on his fair estate in Champagne. No
doubt he liked to look back to the stirring days of his youth, and I
dare say the young folk who gathered round his hospitable hearth knew
the Sire de Joinville for a good story-teller, who could beguile a
winter evening with tales of that luckless Crusade in which he bore his
part, and of his hero and leader, sovereign, saint, and soldier in one,
Louis, the cross-bearing King of France; and, happily for us, before the
stories died with the teller, the young Queen, Jeanne of Navarre,
prevailed upon him to set down his recollections.

Five and fifty years is a long time to look back upon, but doubtless it
seemed but a little while to Jean de Joinville since he gathered his
vassals and kindred to follow King Louis to the E