Finding that he could not turn his son from the strange course on which he was bent, the duke got a great prelate to try and persuade him that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

“We live in an age of progress,” reasoned the philosophic bishop.  “Religion is spreading with the spread of civilisation.  How all our towns are growing!  We shall soon see a bishop in Manchester.”

“I want to see an angel in Manchester,” replied Tancred.

It was no use arguing with a man who talked in this way, and the duke gave Tancred permission to set out on his new crusade.

II.—­The Vigil by the Tomb

The moon sank behind the Mount of Olives, leaving the towers, minarets, and domes of Jerusalem in deep shadow; the lamps in the city went out, and every outline was lost in gloom; but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre still shone in the darkness like a beacon light.  There, while every soul in Jerusalem slumbered, Tancred knelt in prayer by the tomb of Christ, under the lighted dome, waiting for the fire from heaven to strike into his soul.

His strange vigil was the talk of Syria.  It is remarkable how quickly news travels in the East.

“Do you know,” said Besso, Rothschild’s agent, to his foster-son Fakredeen, an emir of Lebanon, as they sat talking in a house near the gate of Sion, “the young Englishman has brought me such a letter that if he were to tell me to rebuild Solomon’s temple, I must do it!”

“He must be fabulously rich!” said Fakredeen, with a sigh.  “What has he come here for?  The English do not come on pilgrimages.  They are all infidels.”

“Well, he has come on a pilgrimage,” said Besso, “and he is the greatest of English princes.  He kneels all night and day in the church over there.”

Yes, after a week of solitude, fasting, and prayer, Tancred was keeping vigil before the empty Sepulchre, where Tancred of Montacute had knelt six hundred years before.  Day after day, night after night, he prayed for inspiration, but no divine voice broke in upon his impassioned reveries.  It was for him that Alonzo Lara, the prior of Terra Santa, kept the light burning all night long at the Holy Sepulchre, for the Spaniard had been moved by the deep faith of the young English nobleman.  And one day he said to him: 

“Sinai led to Calvary.  I think it would be wise for you to trace the path backward from Calvary to Sinai.”

It was extremely perilous at that time to adventure into the great desert, for the wild Bedouin tribes were encamped there.  But, in spite of this, Tancred made arrangements with an Arabian chief, Sheikh Hassan, and set out for Sinai at the head of a well-armed band of Arabs.

“Ah!” said the sheikh, as they entered the mountainous country, after a three days’ march across the wilderness.  “Look at these tracks of horses and camels in the defile.  The marks are fresh.  See that your guns are primed!” he cried to his men.