as one also involved
in the charge of treason, such action was denied him.

For the moment, the Red King's former admiration for this brave young
princess caused him to waver; but those were days when suspicion and
jealousy rose above all nobler traits. His face grew stern again.

"Ordgar of Oxford," he said, "take up the glove!" and Edith knew who was
her accuser. Then the King asked: "Who standeth as champion for Edgar
the Atheling and this maid, his niece?"

Almost before the words were spoken young Robert Fitz Godwine had sprung
to Edith's side.

"That would I, lord king, if a young squire might appear against a
belted knight!"

"Ordgar of Oxford fights not with boys!" said the accuser
contemptuously.

The king's savage humor broke out again.

"Face him with your own page, Sir Ordgar," he said, with a grim laugh.
"Boy against boy would be a fitting wager for a young maid's life." But
the Saxon knight was in no mood for sport.

"Nay, beausire; this is no child's play," he said. "I care naught
for this girl. I stand as champion for the king against yon traitor
Atheling, and if the maiden's cause is his, why then against her too.
This is a man's quarrel."

Young Robert would have spoken yet again as his face flushed hot with
anger at the knight's contemptuous words. But a firm hand was laid upon
his shoulder, and a strong voice said:

"Then is it mine, Sir Ordgar. If between man and man, then will I, with
the gracious permission of our lord the king, stand as champion for this
maiden here and for my good lord, the noble Atheling, whose liegeman
and whose man am I, next to you, lord king." And, taking the mate to the
glove which the Princess Edith had flung down in defiance, he thrust it
into the guard of his cappe. line, or iron skull-cap, in token that
he, Godwine of Winchester, the father of the boy Robert, was the young
girl's champion.

Three days after, in the tilt-yard of Gloucester Castle, the wager of
battle was fought. It was no gay tournament show with streaming banners,
gorgeous lists, gayly dressed ladies, flower-bedecked balconies, and all
the splendid display of a tourney of the knights, of which you read
in the stories of romance and chivalry. It was a solemn and sombre
gathering in which all the arrangements suggested only death and gloom,
while the accused waited in suspense, knowing that halter and fagot
were prepared for them should their champion fall. In quaint and crabbed
Latin the