, Gilbert," said he at each pause in the fight. "He holdeth his
own right well." Then, after a while: "God is with us, Gilbert. Alban
is twice wounded and his horse faileth. One little while longer and the
victory is ours!"

A longer and more continuous interval of combat followed this
last assurance, during which Myles drove the assault fiercely and
unrelentingly as though to overbear his enemy by the very power
and violence of the blows he delivered. The Earl defended himself
desperately, but was borne back, back, back, farther and farther. Every
nerve of those who looked on was stretched to breathless tensity, when,
almost as his enemy was against the barriers, Myles paused and rested.

"Out upon it!" exclaimed the Earl of Mackworth, almost shrilly in his
excitement, as the sudden lull followed the crashing of blows. "Why doth
the boy spare him? That is thrice he hath given him grace to recover;
an he had pushed the battle that time he had driven him back against the
barriers."

It was as the Earl had said; Myles had three times given his enemy grace
when victory was almost in his very grasp. He had three times spared
him, in spite of all he and those dear to him must suffer should his
cruel and merciless enemy gain the victory. It was a false and foolish
generosity, partly the fault of his impulsive youth--more largely of
his romantic training in the artificial code of French chivalry. He felt
that the battle was his, and so he gave his enemy these three chances to
recover, as some chevalier or knight-errant of romance might have
done, instead of pushing the combat to a mercifully speedy end--and his
foolish generosity cost him dear.

In the momentary pause that had thus stirred the Earl of Mackworth to
a sudden outbreak, the Earl of Alban sat upon his panting, sweating
war-horse, facing his powerful young enemy at about twelve paces
distant. He sat as still as a rock, holding his gisarm poised in front
of him. He had, as the Earl of Mackworth had said, been wounded twice,
and each time with the point of the sword, so much more dangerous than a
direct cut with the weapon. One wound was beneath his armor, and no one
but he knew how serious it might be; the other was under the overlapping
of the epauhere, and from it a finger's-breadth of blood ran straight
down his side and over the housings of his horse. From without, the
still motionless iron figure appeared calm and expressionless; within,
who knows what consu