el how you got forward at all. I am
sure I should not have been able to compose a stanza in yonder hampered
measure."

Blondel looked down, and busied himself with the strings of his harp, to
hide an involuntary smile which crept over his features; but it escaped
not Richard's observation.

"By my faith, thou laughest at me, Blondel," he said; "and, in good
truth, every man deserves it who presumes to play the master when he
should be the pupil. But we kings get bad habits of self-opinion. Come,
on with thy lay, dearest Blondel--on after thine own fashion, better
than aught that we can suggest, though we must needs be talking."

Blondel resumed the lay; but as extemporaneous composition was familiar
to him, he failed not to comply with the King's hints, and was perhaps
not displeased to show with how much ease he could new-model a poem,
even while in the act of recitation.

THE BLOODY VEST.

FYTTE SECOND.

The Baptist's fair morrow beheld gallant feats--
There was winning of honour and losing of seats;
There was hewing with falchions and splintering of staves--
The victors won glory, the vanquish'd won graves.
Oh, many a knight there fought bravely and well,
Yet one was accounted his peers to excel,
And 'twas he whose sole armour on body and breast
Seem'd the weed of a damsel when bouned for her rest.

There were some dealt him wounds that were bloody and sore,
But others respected his plight, and forbore.
"It is some oath of honour," they said, "and I trow,
'Twere unknightly to slay him achieving his vow."
Then the Prince, for his sake, bade the tournament cease--
He flung down his warder, the trumpets sung peace;
And the judges declare, and competitors yield,
That the Knight of the Night-gear was first in the field.

The feast it was nigh, and the mass it was nigher,
When before the fair Princess low looted a squire,
And deliver'd a garment unseemly to view,
With sword-cut and spear-thrust, all hack'd and pierc'd through;
All rent and all tatter'd, all clotted with blood,
With foam of the horses, with dust, and with mud;
Not the point of that lady's small finger, I ween,
Could have rested on spot was unsullied and clean.

"This token my master, Sir Thomas a Kent,
Restores to the Princess of fair Benevent;
He that climbs the tall t