sordid by the conviction that the despoiling of the unbelievers was sanctified and made pure in the eyes of God. The birthplace and the tomb of Christ were to be rescued and, in the glory of that accomplishment, the acquisition of a little land and property, the lining of one's purse, became only incidental. No doubt then that the fires of idealism burned white hot in the Europe of that day, and the conflagration rolled on with none, to stay it, though it left abandoned homes and disordered communities behind it. Bishops forgot their dioceses, priests their churches, monks their cells, laborers their benches and farms, merchants their commerce. There were desertea "husbands as well as deserted wives. In hordes they marched out from a far from merry England, from Scotland and Ireland, from France and Italy, with radiant faces and beaming eyes, oblivious of hardship as of danger. Buoyant and intrepid, these adventurers in the name of God plunged into trackless forests, crossed stormy seas, climbed forbidding mountains. Suffering unbelievable hardships, enduring the torments of burning sun and freezing wind, of starvation and of thirst, they emerged finally in the Promised Land and went eagerly into battle against a valiant and often overwhelming foe, to meet death undaunted and be thrust into nameless graves. In the meantime rumors of the coming avalanche had penetrated the Holy Land and the adjacent provinces. And, if there was dismay at the tidings, there was also indignant wrath and hot determination to