a Turkish sail in sight.  The inhabitants are well nigh mad with joy.  But elated as we are at our success, our gladness is sorely damped by the state of the grand master, and the loss of so many of our comrades, though, indeed, our langue has suffered less than any of the others, for the brunt of the attacks on St. Nicholas and the breach did not fall upon us, still we lost heavily when at last we hurried up to win back the wall from them.”

“Who have fallen?” Gervaise asked.

“Among the principal knights are Thomas Ben, Henry Haler, Thomas Ploniton, John Vaquelin, Adam Tedbond, Henry Batasbi, and Henry Anlui.  Marmaduke Lumley is dangerously wounded.  Of the younger knights, some fifteen have been killed, and among them your old enemy Rivers.  He died a coward’s death, the only one, thank God, of all our langue.  When the fray was thickest Sir John Boswell marked him crouching behind the parapet.  He seized him by the gorget, and hauled him out, but his knees shook so that he could scarcely walk, and would have slunk back when released.  Sir John raised his mace to slay him as a disgrace to the Order and our langue, when a ball from one of the Turkish cannon cut him well nigh in half, so that he fell by the hands of the Turks, and not by the sword of one of the Order he had disgraced.  Fortunately none, save half a dozen knights of our langue, saw the affair, and you may be sure we shall say nothing about it; and instead of Rivers’ name going down to infamy, it will appear in the list of those who died in the defence of Rhodes.”

“May God assoil his soul!” Gervaise said earnestly. “’Tis strange that one of gentle blood should have proved a coward.  Had he remained at home, and turned courtier, instead of entering the Order, he might have died honoured, without any one ever coming to doubt his courage.”

“He would have turned out bad whatever he was,” Ralph said contemptuously; “for my part, I never saw a single good quality in him.”

Long before Gervaise was out of hospital, the glad tidings that D’Aubusson would recover, in spite of the prognostications of the leech, spread joy through the city, and at about the same time that Gervaise left the hospital the grand master was able to sit up.  Two or three days afterwards he sent for Gervaise.

“I owe my life to you, Sir Gervaise,” he said, stretching out his thin, white hand to him as he entered.  “You stood by me nobly till I fell, for, though unable to stand, I was not unconscious, and saw how you stood above me and kept the swarming Moslems at bay.  No knight throughout the siege has rendered such great service as you have done.  Since I have been lying unable to move, I have thought of many things; among them, that I had forgotten to give you the letters and presents that came for you after you sailed away.  They are in that cabinet; please bring them to me.  There,” he said, as Gervaise brought a bulky