"
"May thy days be multiplied!" answered the Hakim, and withdrew
from the apartment after the usual deep obeisance.
King Richard gazed after him as he departed, like one but half-satisfied with what had passed.
"Strange pertinacity," he said, "in this Hakim, and a wonderful
chance to interfere between that audacious Scot and the
chastisement he has merited so richly. Yet let him live! there
is one brave man the more in the world. And now for the
Austrian. Ho! is the Baron of Gilsland there without?"
Sir Thomas de Vaux thus summoned, his bulky form speedily
darkened the opening of the pavilion, while behind him glided as
a spectre, unannounced, yet unopposed, the savage form of the
hermit of Engaddi, wrapped in his goatskin mantle.
Richard, without noticing his presence, called in a loud tone to
the baron, "Sir Thomas de Vaux, of Lanercost and Gilsland, take
trumpet and herald, and go instantly to the tent of him whom they
call Archduke of Austria, and see that it be when the press of
his knights and vassals is greatest around him, as is likely at
this hour, for the German boar breakfasts ere he hears mass--
enter his presence with as little reverence as thou mayest, and
impeach him, on the part of Richard of England, that he hath this
night, by his own hand, or that of others, stolen from its staff
the Banner of England.
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