onward.  A very brief space divided him from his friends:  the spirited charger on which he rode, cheered by his hand and voice, with one successful bound cleared the remaining impediments in his way, but at that moment, with a piercing cry of suffering, sprung high in the air and fell dead, nearly crushing his astonished master with his weight.  Happily for Stanley, the despairing anguish of the Moors at that moment at its height, from the triumphant entry of the Spaniards into their beloved Albania, aggravated by the shrieks of the victims in the unsparing slaughter, effectually turned the attention of those around him from his fall.  He sprung up, utterly unable to account for the death of his steed:  the dastard blow had been dealt from behind, and no Moor had been near but those in front.  He looked hastily round him:  a tall figure was retreating through the thickening melee, whose dull, red armor, and deep, black plume, discovered on the instant his identity.  Arthur’s blood tingled with just indignation, and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from following, and demanding on the instant, and at the sword’s point, the meaning of the deed.

The sudden start, and muttered execration of the Italian, as Stanley joined the victorious group around the Marquis, convinced him that his reappearance, and unhurt, was quite contrary to his mysterious enemy’s intention.  The exciting events of the siege which followed, the alternate hope and fear of the Spaniards, reduced to great distress by the Moors having succeeded in turning the course of a river which supplied the city with water, and finally, the timely arrival of succors under the Duke of Medina Sidonia, which compelled the Moors to raise the siege and disperse—­the rejoicing attendant on so great and almost unexpected a triumph, all combined to prevent any attention to individual concerns.  The Italian had not crossed Arthur’s path again, except in the general attack or defence; and Stanley found the best means of conquering his own irritation towards such secret machinations, was to treat them with indifference and contempt.

The halls of Alhama were of course kept strongly manned; and a guard, under an experienced officer, constantly occupied the summit of a lofty tower, situated on a precipitous height which commanded a view of the open country for miles, and overlooked the most distant approach of the Moors.  As was usual to Moorish architecture, the tower had been erected on a rock, which on one side shelved down so straight and smooth, as to appear a continuance of the tower-wall, but forming from the battlements a precipice some thousand feet in depth.  The strongest nerve turned sick and giddy to look beneath, and the side of the tower overlooking it was almost always kept unguarded.