battle.'

'If, sir,' replied Sir Geraint, 'you and this maiden, your daughter,
will permit me to challenge for her, I will engage, if I escape alive
from the tournament, to be the maiden's knight while I shall live.'

'What say you, daughter?' said the old earl.

'Indeed, sir,' replied the maiden, gently flushing, 'I am in your
hands. And if this fair knight will have it so, he may challenge for
me.'

This said Enid to hide her true thoughts; for indeed she felt that she
had never before seen as noble a youth as Geraint, or one for whom her
thoughts were so kind.

'Then so shall it be,' said Earl Inewl.

On the morrow, ere it was dawn, they arose and arrayed themselves; and
at break of day they were in the meadow. Before the seat of the young
earl, who was Inewl's nephew, there was set up a post, and on it was
the figure of a gyr-falcon, of pure gold, and marvellously wrought,
with wings outspread and talons astretch, as if it were about to strike
its prey.

Then the knight whom Geraint had followed entered the field with his
lady, and when he had made proclamation, he bade her go and fetch the
falcon from its place, 'for,' said he, 'thou art the fairest of women,
and, if any deny it, by force will I defend the fame of thy beauty and
thy gentleness and nobleness.'

'Touch not the falcon!' cried Geraint, 'for here is a maiden who is
fairer, and more noble, and more gentle, and who has a better claim to
it than any.'

The stranger knight looked keenly at Geraint, and in a haughty voice
cried:

'I know not who thou art; but if thou art worthy to bear arms against
me, come forward.'

Geraint mounted his horse, and when he rode to the end of the meadow
laughter rippled and rang from the people watching him. For he bore an
old and rusty suit of armour that was of an ancient pattern, and the
joints of which gaped here and there. And none knew who he was, for his
shield was bare.

But when, thundering together, the two knights had each broken several
lances upon the shield of the other, the people eyed Sir Geraint with
some regard. When it seemed that the proud knight was the better
jouster, the earl and his people shouted, and Inewl and Enid had sad
looks.

'Pity it is,' said Enid, 'that our young knight hath but that old
gaping armour. For when they clash together, I feel the cruel point of
the proud knight's spear as if it were in my heart.'

'Fear not, my dear,' said the old dame, her mother. 'I feel tha