Blondel went to bed, and next morning to church. Then he went up to the fort.

'I am a minstrel,' said he, 'out of employment. Will you hear me play?' he asked the governor.

'Willingly; 'tis right dull here.'

He played so well that the Austrians kept him all winter. One day he went into the garden, and he heard a voice singing a song he had composed. It stopped; Blondel took up the strain, overjoyed to have found Richard at last. Blondel went back to England, and told Queen Eleanor where her son was, and by his means he was ransomed.

This is a pretty tale; but many historians think it was not true.

One day a fierce lion was turned loose; Richard was intentionally put in its way. He met it boldly, grasped its open jaws, thrust his arm down its throat, and, says an old chronicler, 'ate it hot and raw.' Oh, let us hope that tale is not true either.

In vain his mother wrote to the Pope, Richard languished two long years a weary captive; but at last his heavy ransom was paid, at a heavy cost to England; and on the 11th of February 1194, he landed, to confront his brother John with his black treachery, at the port of Sandwich in Kent.

His Crusade had cost more lives than any one of the preceding holy wars. He had left Jerusalem still

in Moslem hands; but he was of heroic courage, his valour made him respected by his enemies in spite of his fiery temper, and we ever think of Richard Cœur de Lion, King of England, as 'a gallant knight and true,' and a Hero of the Crusades.

MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH,
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE.

GRIFFITH AND FARRAN,

(SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS),

CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD,

LONDON.

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