exercises with the rough riders of his father, smiled
grimly.

"If you can evade his first charge, which I doubt not that you can, you
will have him at your mercy, with your light spear against his lance,
and your moor horse against his charger; but put on the heaviest of
your two steel caps, and strong shoulder pieces. 'Tis like enough that,
in his temper, he may throw away his lance and betake him to his sword.
I will demand that he carries neither mace nor battle-axe, and that you
should only carry sword and spear. Your horse's nimbleness may keep you
out of harm, which is as much as you can expect, or hope for. Put on a
light breast plate, too, for in spite of the wooden shield to his lance
head, he may hurt you sorely if he does chance to strike you."

Oswald saw that his horse was carefully saddled. He procured from his
uncle a piece of cloth; and, removing the spearhead, wrapped this round
the head of the shaft, until it formed a ball the size of his fist.
This he whitened thickly with chalk.

In a few minutes Sinclair, who was the heaviest and strongest of the
esquires, rode out into the courtyard in full armour. Sir Henry, with
his own esquires, and several of the gentlemen of the earl's household,
came down; and Hotspur laughed at the contrast presented by the two
combatants: the one a mass of steel, with shield and lance, on a
warhorse fully caparisoned; the other a slight, active-looking figure,
with but little defensive armour, on a rough pony which had scarce an
ounce of superfluous flesh.

"Now, gentlemen," he said, "we may be engaged in warfare with the
Scots, before long; and you will here have an opportunity of seeing the
nature of border fighting. The combat may seem to you ridiculously
unequal, but I know the moss trooper, and I can tell you that, in a
single combat like this, activity goes far to counterbalance weight and
armour. You remember how Robert Bruce, before Bannockburn, mounted on
but a pony, struck down Sir Robert Bohun, a good knight and a powerful
one."

As the party went out, through the gates, to the tilting ground outside
the walls, the men-at-arms, seeing that something unusual was going to
take place, crowded up to the battlements, looking down on the ground.

"Now, gentlemen," Percy said, "you will take your places at opposite
ends of the field; and when I drop my scarf, you will charge. It is
understood that you need not necessarily ride straight at each other;
but that it