d
life--the second was soon to follow.

CHAPTER 21

There are now and then times in the life of every one when new and
strange things occur with such rapidity that one has hardly time to
catch one's breath between the happenings. It is as though the old were
crumbling away--breaking in pieces--to give place to the new that is
soon to take its place.

So it was with Myles Falworth about this time. The very next day after
this interview in the bed-chamber, word came to him that Sir James Lee
wished to speak with him in the office. He found the lean, grizzled old
knight alone, sitting at the heavy oaken table with a tankard of spiced
ale at his elbow, and a dish of wafers and some fragments of cheese on a
pewter platter before him. He pointed to his clerk's seat--a joint stool
somewhat like a camp-chair, but made of heavy oaken braces and with a
seat of hog-skin--and bade Myles be seated.

It was the first time that Myles had ever heard of such courtesy being
extended to one of the company of squires, and, much wondering, he
obeyed the invitation, or rather command, and took the seat.

The old knight sat regarding him for a while in silence, his one eye,
as bright and as steady as that of a hawk, looking keenly from under the
penthouse of its bushy brows, the while he slowly twirled and twisted
his bristling wiry mustaches, as was his wont when in meditation. At
last he broke the silence. "How old art thou?" said he, abruptly.

"I be turned seventeen last April," Myles answered, as he had the
evening before to Lord Mackworth.

"Humph!" said Sir James; "thou be'st big of bone and frame for thine
age. I would that thy heart were more that of a man likewise, and less
that of a giddy, hare-brained boy, thinking continually of naught but
mischief."

Again he fell silent, and Myles sat quite still, wondering if it was
on account of any special one of his latest escapades that he had been
summoned to the office--the breaking of the window in the Long Hall by
the stone he had flung at the rook, or the climbing of the South Tower
for the jackdaw's nest.

"Thou hast a friend," said Sir James, suddenly breaking into his
speculations, "of such a kind that few in this world possess. Almost
ever since thou hast been here he hath been watching over thee. Canst
thou guess of whom I speak?"

"Haply it is Lord George Beaumont," said Myles; "he hath always been
passing kind to me.

"Nay," said Sir James, "it is not of him