of cloister life blazed forth,
consuming reason and intelligence; with a sweep of his mighty arms he
cleared a space about him, hurling his enemies aside as if they were
made of straw. He raised his voice above the din, cursing God and men
and Moors. As they closed in upon him he snatched from the hands of a
lusty slave a massive wrought-iron brazier, and whirling it high above
his head, he sent its glowing coals flying into the farthest corners
of the room. Then with this weapon he laid about him right and left,
while men fell like grain before the reaper.

"At him!" shouted Abul Malek, from his balcony. "Pull down the weapons
from the walls! The fool is mad!"

Zahra clutched at her father's sleeve and pointed to a distant corner,
where a tongue of flame was licking the dry woodwork and hangings.
Her eyes were flashing and her lips were parted; she bent forward,
following the priest with eagerness.

"Allah be praised!" she breathed. "He is a Man!"

Elzemah strove to sheathe his poinard in the monk's bare breast, but
the brazier crushed him down. Across the wide floor raged the contest,
but the mighty priest was irresistible. Hassam, seeing that the priest
was fighting toward the balcony, flung himself upon the stairs, crying
to his father and his sister to be gone. By now the castle echoed with
a frightful din through which arose a sinister crackling. The light
increased moment by moment, and there came the acrid smell of smoke.

Men left the maniac to give battle to the other fury. Some fled to the
doors and fought with their clumsy fastenings, but as they flung
them back a draught sucked through, changing the place into a raging
furnace.

With his back against the stairs, Hassam hewed at the monk with his
scimitar; he had done as well had he essayed to fell an oak with a
single blow. Up over him rushed the giant, to the balcony above, where
Abul Malek and his daughter stood at bay in the trap of their own
manufacture. There, in the glare of the mounting flames, Fray Joseph
sank his mighty fingers through the Moor's black beard.

The place by now was suffocating, and the roar of the conflagration
had drowned all other sounds. Men wrapped their robes about their
heads and hurled themselves blindly at the doors, fighting with one
another, with the licking flames, with the dead that clogged the
slippery flags. But the maid remained. She tore at the tattered
cassock of the priest, crying into his ear:

"Come, Jo