wives and daughters of cavaliers who had been taken prisoners or killed in battle. Whereupon he demanded to know what they wished. And they replied, for God's sake have mercy on them. That he had put some of their men in prison and some he had killed, and they had lost their lands ; and that, for God's sake, he should advise them and give them his aid. When Saladin saw them weep he had great pity for them, and he himself wept in sympathy for them." The upshot was the freeing of all those men whom he held in captivity, and to those who were widows and orphans he granted sums out of his own treasury, to some more and to others less, according to what their estates had been. " And he gave so freely that they praised him before God and told widely of the kindness and the honor which Saladin had done them." A guard of Moslem soldiers escorted the fugitive Christians to the portals of cities held by their own people, but here their reception was not so kindly. The Count of Tripoli, in particular, shut the gates before the unfortunates, and his soldiers came out and robbed them of the possessions the conqueror had allowed them to carry away. Endless are the tales of his indulgence to the conquered enemy and finally his generosity is made the weapon to encompass the most telling defeat of his career. Had he not been so liberal in allowing the garrisons of the conquered cities along the seacoast to go off with their arms intact, the siege of Acre would not have been possible. It was the assembling