lf.

"Why should I spare what I have already conquered, and what I
have sworn to destroy?" he asked. "When I offered you mercy you
would have none of it. Why do you ask it now?"

Then Balian answered him in those words that will ring through
history forever.

"For this reason, Sultan. Before God, if die we must, we will
first slaughter our women and our little children, leaving you
neither male nor female to enslave. We will burn the city and its
wealth; we will grind the holy Rock to powder and make of the
mosque el-Aksa, and the other sacred places, a heap of ruins. We
will cut the throats of the five thousand followers of the
Prophet who are in our power, and then, every man of us who can
bear arms, we will sally out into the midst of you and fight on
till we fall. So I think Jerusalem shall cost you dear."

The Sultan stared at him and stroked his beard.

"Eighty thousand lives," he muttered; "eighty thousand lives,
besides those of my soldiers whom you will slay. A great
slaughter--and the holy city destroyed forever. Oh! it was of
such a massacre as this that once I dreamed."

Then Saladin sat still and thought a while, his head bowed upon
his breast.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Saint Rosamund

From the day when he saw Saladin Godwin began to grow strong
again, and as his health came back, so he fell to thinking.
Rosamund was lost to him and Masouda was dead, and at times he
wished that he were dead also. What more had he to do with his
life, which had been so full of sorrow, struggle and bloodshed?
Go back to England to live there upon his lands, and wait until
old age and death overtook him? The prospect would have pleased
many, but it did not please Godwin, who felt that his days were
not given to him for this purpose, and that while he lived he
must also labour.

As he sat thinking thus, and was very unhappy, the aged bishop
Egbert, who had nursed him so well, entered his tent, and, noting
his face, asked:

"What ails you, my son?"

"Would you wish to hear?" said Godwin.

"Am I not your confessor, with a right to hear?" answered the
gentle old man. "Show me your trouble."

So Godwin began at the beginning and told it all--how as a lad he
had secretly desired to enter the Church; how the old prior of
the abbey at Stangate counselled him that he was too young to
judge; how then the love of Rosamund had entered into his life
with his manhood, and he had thought no more of religion. He told
him