es of need. At
last he halted before the armorer's shop at the castle-yard, staring at
the fine suits of plate, the engraved pectorals, the plumed helmets, the
cunningly jointed gorgets, as a child at a sweet-shop.

"Well, Squire Loring," said Wat the armorer, looking sidewise from the
furnace where he was tempering a sword blade, "what can I sell you this
morning? I swear to you by Tubal Cain, the father of all workers in
metal, that you might go from end to end of Cheapside and never see a
better suit than that which hangs from yonder hook!"

"And the price, armorer?"

"To anyone else, two hundred and fifty rose nobles. To you two hundred."

"And why cheaper to me, good fellow?"

"Because I fitted your father also for the wars, and a finer suit never
went out of my shop. I warrant that it turned many an edge before he
laid it aside. We worked in mail in those days, and I had as soon have a
well-made thick-meshed mail as any plates; but a young knight will be
in the fashion like any dame of the court, and so it must be plate now,
even though the price be trebled."

"Your rede is that the mail is as good?"

"I am well sure of it."

"Hearken then, armorer! I cannot at this moment buy a suit of plate, and
yet I sorely need steel harness on account of a small deed which it is
in my mind to do. Now I have at my home at Tilford that very suit of
mail of which you speak, with which my father first rode to the wars.
Could you not so alter it that it should guard my limbs also?"

The armorer looked at Nigel's small upright figure and burst out
laughing. "You jest, Squire Loring! The suit was made for one who was
far above the common stature of man."

"Nay, I jest not. If it will but carry me through one spear-running it
will have served its purpose."

The armorer leaned back on his anvil and pondered while Nigel stared
anxiously at his sooty face.

"Right gladly would I lend you a suit of plate for this one venture,
Squire Loring, but I know well that if you should be overthrown your
harness becomes prize to the victor. I am a poor man with many children,
and I dare not risk the loss of it. But as to what you say of the old
suit of mail, is it indeed in good condition?"

"Most excellent, save only at the neck, which is much frayed."

"To shorten the limbs is easy. It is but to cut out a length of the mail
and then loop up the links. But to shorten the body--nay, that is beyond
the armorer's art."

"It was my