Many a day had gone by since the brethren bade farewell to Rosamund at Damascus.

Now, one burning July night, they sat upon their horses, the moonlight gleaming on their mail.

Still as statues they sat, looking out from a rocky mountain top across that grey and arid plain which stretches from near Nazareth to the lip of the hills at whose foot lies Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee.

Beneath them, camped around the fountain of Seffurieh, were spread the hosts of the Franks to which they did sentinel; thirteen hundred knights, twenty thousand foot, and hordes of Turcopoles--that is, natives of the country, armed after the fashion of the Saracens.

Two miles away to the southeast glimmered the white houses of Nazareth, set in the lap of the mountains.