--and yet he weareth
not much of that neither--I see him often go plainer than I would think
befitted me to do."

[Charlemagne (742?-814): King of the Franks and crowned Emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire in 800. His kingdom included Germany and France, the
greater part of Italy, and Spain as far as the Ebro. As Emperor of the
West he bore the title Caesar Augustus. He established churches and
monasteries, and encouraged arts and learning. He figures largely
in mediaeval minstrelsy, where the achievements of his knights, or
paladins, rival those of Arthur's court.]

[Robert Bruce: the grandson of Robert Bruce, the competitor with John
Baliol for the Scottish throne. He defeated the English forces at
Bannockburn in 1314, and thus secured the independence of Scotland, an
independence which lasted until the two kingdoms were united under one
crown in 1707.]

[William Wallace: another brave Scottish leader in the war for
independence against Edward I of England. Wallace was betrayed in 1305
and carried to London, where he was cruelly executed as a traitor.]

[Barbour: an eminent Scottish poet contemporary with Chaucer. His
principal work, The Bruce, records the life and deeds of Robert Bruce.]

[Harry the Minstrel or "Blind Harry" was the author of a poem on the
life and deeds of Wallace which was held in peculiar reverence by the
Scotch people.]

"But you meet not my exception, fair uncle," answered young Durward;
"I would serve, since serve I must in a foreign land, somewhere where a
brave deed, were it my hap to do one, might work me a name."

"I understand you, my fair nephew," said the royal man at arms, "I
understand you passing well; but you are unripe in these matters. The
Duke of Burgundy is a hot brained, impetuous, pudding headed, iron
ribbed dare all. He charges at the head of his nobles and native
knights, his liegemen of Artois and Hainault; think you, if you were
there, or if I were there myself, that we could be much farther forward
than the Duke and all his brave nobles of his own land? If we were not
up with them, we had a chance to be turned on the Provost Marshal's
hands for being slow in making to; if we were abreast of them, all would
be called well and we might be thought to have deserved our pay; and
grant that I was a spear's length or so in the front, which is both
difficult and dangerous in such a melee where all do their best, why, my
lord Duke says in his Flemish tongue, when he sees a goo