ecognize you, sir," she would straightway make reply; and
well she might, for, with his steel-shod countenance and corrugated-iron
clothes, he was generally so thoroughly _incog._ that his crest, on a
new shield freshly painted and grained and bearing a motto, was his only
introduction. Imagine a sweet girl, who for years had been under the
eagle eye of a middle-weight chaperon, suddenly espying in the moonlight
a disguised man under the window on horseback, in the act of asking her
to join him for a few weeks at his shooting-box in the swamp. Then, if
you please, imagine her asking for his card, whereupon he exposes the
side of his new tin shield, on which is painted in large Old English
letters a Latin motto meaning, "It is the early bird that catches the
worm," with bird rampant, worm couchant on a field uncultivated.

Then, seating herself behind the knight, she must escape for days, and
even weeks,--one escape seeming to call for another, as it were. Thus,
however, the expense of a wedding was saved, and the knight with the
biggest chest measurement generally got the heiress with the
copper-colored hair.

[Illustration: CREST OF A POPULAR KNIGHT.]

He wore a crest on his helmet adorned with German favors given him by
lady admirers, so that the crest of a popular young knight often looked
like a slump at the _Bon Marche_.

[Illustration: THE "VIGIL OF ARMS."]

The most peculiar condition required for entry into knighthood was the
"vigil of arms," which consisted in keeping a long silent watch in some
gloomy spot--a haunted one preferred--over the arms he was about to
assume. The illustration representing this subject is without doubt one
of the best of the kind extant, and even in the present age of the
gold-cure is suggestive of a night-errant of to-day.

A tournament was a sort of refined equestrian prize-fight with
one-hundred-ounce jabbers. Each knight, clad in tin-foil and armed
cap-a-pie, riding in each other's direction just as fast as possible
with an uncontrollable desire to push one's adversary off his horse,
which meant defeat, because no man could ever climb a horse in full
armor without a feudal derrick to assist him.

[Illustration: A JUDICIAL COMBAT.]

The victor was entitled to the horse and armor of the vanquished, which
made the castle paddock of a successful knight resemble the convalescent
ward of the Old Horses' Home.

This tourney also constituted the prevailing court of those times,