ss. For if
there were any embarrassed, that one was certainly not Helene. And if any
of us lacked reposefulness of manners, that one was certainly a staring
jackanapes, who did not know which foot to stand upon, nor yet how to sit
down on the oaken settle when a seat was offered him, nor, last of all,
when nor how to take his departure when he had once sat down. And as to
the identity of that jackass, there needs no further particularity.

Nevertheless, I talked pleasantly enough with both of them, and I might
have been an acquaintance of the day for all the notice that the Little
Playmate took of me, oven when the Lady Ysolinde told her, evidently not
for the first time, of my standing sentry by the door and blowing upon
the match at my girdle.

From without we heard presently the clapping of hands and loud deray of
merrymaking, so I went to find out what it might be that was causing such
an uproar.

There I found Jorian and Boris giving a kind of exhibition of their skill
in military exercises. It might be, also, that they desired to teach a
lesson for the benefit of the wild robber border folk and the yet more
ruffianly kempers who foregathered in this strange inn of Erdberg on the
borders of the Mark.

I summoned the maids that they might look on. For I wot the scene was a
curious and pleasing one, and I could see that the eyes of the Lady
Ysolinde glittered. But our little maid, being used to all these things
from her youth, cared nothing for it, though the thing was indeed
marvellous in itself.

When I went out our two men-at-arms had each of them in hand his straight
Wendish Tolleknife, made heavy at the end of the Swedish blade, but light
as to the handle, and hafted with cork from Spain.

Ten yards apart, shoulder to shoulder they stood, and, first of all, each
of them poising the knife in the hollow of his hand with a peculiar
dancing movement, set it writhing across the room at a marked circle on a
board. The two knives sped simultaneously with a vicious whir, and stood
quivering, with their blades touching each other, in the centre of the
white. At the next trial, so exactly had they been aimed that the point
of the one hit upon the haft of the other and stripped the cork almost
to the blade. But Jorian, to whom the knife belonged, mended it with a
piece of string, telling the company philosophically that it was no bad
thing to have a string hanging loose to a Tolleknife, for when it went
into any one