“Think you that you will go to the war, Sir Walter?” Cuthbert asked.

“I know not as yet; it must much depend upon the king’s mood.  For myself I care not so greatly as some do about this question of the Holy Land.  There has been blood enough shed already to drown it, and we are no nearer than when the first swarms of pilgrims made their way thither.”

On Cuthbert’s returning home and telling his mother all that had passed, she shook her head, but said that she could not oppose his wishes to go with the earl when the time should come, and that it was only right he should follow in the footsteps of the good knight his father.

“I have heard much of these Crusades,” he said; “canst tell me about them?”

“In truth I know not much, my son; but Father Francis, I doubt not, can tell you all the particulars anent the affair.”

The next time that Father Francis, who was the special adviser of Dame Editha, rode over from the convent on his ambling nag, Cuthbert eagerly asked him if he would tell him what he knew of the Crusades.

“Hitherto, my son,” he said, “the Crusades have, it must be owned, brought many woes upon Europe.  From the early times great swarms of pilgrims were accustomed to go from all parts of Europe to the holy shrines.

“When the followers of the evil prophet took possession of the land, they laid grievous burdens upon the pilgrims, heavily they fined them, persecuted them in every way, and treated them as if indeed they were but the scum of the earth under their feet.

“So terrible were the tales that reached Europe that men came to think that it would be a good deed truly to wrest the sepulcher of the Lord from the hands of these heathens.  Pope Urban was the first to give authority and strength to the movement, and at a vast meeting at Claremont of thirty thousand clergy and four thousand barons, it was decided that war must be made against the infidel.  From all parts of France men flocked to hear Pope Urban preach there; and when he had finished his oration the vast multitude, carried away by enthusiasm, swore to win the holy sepulcher or to die.

“Mighty was the throng that gathered for the First Crusade.  Monks threw aside their gowns and took to the sword and cuirass; even women and children joined in the throng.  What, my son, could be expected from a great army so formed?  Without leaders, without discipline, without tactics, without means of getting food, they soon became a scourge of the country through which they passed.

“Passing through Hungary, where they greatly ravaged the fields, they came to Bulgaria.  Here the people, struck with astonishment and dismay at this great horde of hungry people who arrived among them like locusts, fell upon them with the sword, and great numbers fell.  The first band that passed into that country perished miserably, and of all that huge assembly, it may be said that, numbering at the