hou art an old bear!" muttered Myles to himself, as the old one-eyed
knight turned on his heel and strode away. "Beshrew me! an I show thee
not that I am as worthy to couch a lance as thou one of these fine
days!"

However, during the last of the three years the grinding routine of his
training had not been quite so severe as at first. His exercises took
him more often out into the fields, and it was during this time of his
knightly education that he sometimes rode against some of the castle
knights in friendly battle with sword or lance or wooden mace. In these
encounters he always held his own; and held it more than well, though,
in his boyish simplicity, he was altogether unconscious of his own
skill, address, and strength. Perhaps it was his very honest modesty
that made him so popular and so heartily liked by all.

He had by this time risen to the place of head squire or chief bachelor,
holding the same position that Walter Blunt had occupied when he himself
had first come, a raw country boy, to Devlen. The lesser squires
and pages fairly worshipped him as a hero, albeit imposing upon his
good-nature. All took a pride in his practice in knightly exercises, and
fabulous tales were current among the young fry concerning his strength
and skill.

Yet, although Myles was now at the head of his class, he did not,
as other chief bachelors had done, take a leading position among the
squires in the Earl's household service. Lord Mackworth, for his own
good reasons, relegated him to the position of Lord George's especial
attendant. Nevertheless, the Earl always distinguished him from the
other esquires, giving him a cool nod whenever they met; and Myles, upon
his part--now that he had learned better to appreciate how much his Lord
had done for him--would have shed the last drop of blood in his veins
for the head of the house of Beaumont.

As for the two young ladies, he often saw them, and sometimes, even
in the presence of the Earl, exchanged a few words with them, and Lord
Mackworth neither forbade it nor seemed to notice it.

Towards the Lady Anne he felt the steady friendly regard of a lad for a
girl older than himself; towards the Lady Alice, now budding into ripe
young womanhood, there lay deep in his heart the resolve to be some day
her true knight in earnest as he had been her knight in pretence in that
time of boyhood when he had so perilously climbed into the privy garden.

In body and form he was now a man,