Then Wulf dropped his head, and trusting himself to speak no more words, Godwin mounted his horse, and, without so much as looking back, rode into the narrow street and out through the gateway, till presently he was lost in the distance and the desert.

Wulf and Rosamund watched him go in silence, for they were choked with tears.

“Little did I look to part with my brother thus,” said Wulf at length in a thick and angry voice.  “By God’s Wounds!  I had more gladly died at his side in battle than leave him to meet his doom alone.”

“And leave me to meet my doom alone,” murmured Rosamund; then added, “Oh!  I would that I were dead who have lived to bring all this woe upon you both, and upon that great heart, Masouda.  I say, Wulf, I would that I were dead.”

“Like enough the wish will be fulfilled before all is done,” answered Wulf wearily, “only then I pray that I may be dead with you, for now, Rosamund, Godwin has gone, forever as I fear, and you alone are left to me.  Come; let us cease complaining, since to dwell upon these griefs cannot help us, and be thankful that for a while, at least, we are free.  Follow me, Rosamund, and we will ride to this nunnery to find you shelter, if we may.”

So they rode on through the narrow streets that were crowded with scared people, for now the news was spread that the embassy had rejected the terms of Saladin.  He had offered to give the city food and to suffer its inhabitants to fortify the walls, and to hold them till the following Whitsuntide if, should no help reach them, they would swear to surrender then.  But they had answered that while they had life they would never abandon the place where their God had died.

So now war was before them—­war to the end; and who were they that must bear its brunt?  Their leaders were slain or captive, their king a prisoner, their soldiers skeletons on the field of Hattin.  Only the women and children, the sick, the old, and the wounded remained—­perhaps eighty thousand souls in all—­but few of whom could bear arms.  Yet these few must defend Jerusalem against the might of the victorious Saracen.  Little wonder that they wailed in the streets till the cry of their despair went up to heaven, for in their hearts all of them knew that the holy place was doomed and their lives were forfeited.

Pushing their path through this sad multitude, who took little note of them, at length they came to the nunnery on the sacred Via Dolorosa, which Wulf had seen when Godwin and he were in Jerusalem after they had been dismissed by Saladin from Damascus.  Its door stood in the shadow of that arch where the Roman Pilate had uttered to all generations the words “Behold the man!”

Here the porter told him that the nuns were at prayer in their chapel.  Wulf replied that he must see the lady abbess upon a matter which would not delay, and they were shown into a cool and lofty room.  Presently the door opened, and through it came the abbess in her white robes—­a tall and stately Englishwoman, of middle age, who looked at them curiously.