were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in every
corner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number of
heads; while Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir
Breuse Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear
that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in
Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook
with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters; and the firmament
rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune of the day swung
doubtful--now on this side, now on that; till at last Lancelot, grim
and great, thrusting through the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy
task), and bestrode her, threatening doom; while the Cornish knight,
forgetting hard-won fame of old, cried piteously, "You're hurting me,
I tell you! and you're tearing my frock!" Then it happed that Sir Kay,
hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching sight
suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet afar off; while
the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with talk and laughter, was
borne to our ears.

"What is it?" inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her curls;
while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted nimbly to the
hedge.

I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of
"Soldiers!" I was off to the hedge, Charlotte picking herself up and
scurrying after.

Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet flamed in
the eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked delightfully; while the men,
in a halo of dust, smoked their short clays like the heroes they were.
In a swirl of intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by,
while we shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jolly
horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The moment
they were past we were through the hedge and after them. Soldiers were
not the common stuff of everyday life. There had been nothing like this
since the winter before last, when on a certain afternoon--bare of
leaf and monochrome in its hue of sodden fallow and frost-nipt
copse--suddenly the hounds had burst through the fence with their mellow
cry, and all the paddock was for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof
and dotted with glancing red. But this was better, since it could only
mean that blows and bloodshed were in the air.

"Is there going to be a battle?" panted Harold, hardly able