sty Knight. It lasted little
longer than the three months of that strange summer of sports within
the castle-walls of Amberley. It was at the jousting on Midsummer Day
that he first was seen. The lists were open and the roll of knights had
answered to their names, and cried in all men's ears their ladies'
praises; and nine in ten cried Maudlin. And as the last knight spoke,
there suddenly stood in the great gateway an unknown man with his
vizard closed, and his coming was greeted with a roar of laughter. For
he was clothed from head to foot in antique arms, battered and rusted
like old pots and pans that have seen a twelvemonths' weather in a
ditch. Out of the merriment occasioned by his appearance, certain of
the spectators began to cry, "A champion! a champion!" And others
nudged with their elbows, chuckling, "It is the Queen's jester."

But the newcomer stood his ground unflinchingly, and when he could be
heard cried fiercely, "They who call me jester shall find they jest
before their time. I claim by my kingly birth to take part in this
day's fray; and men shall meet me to their rue!"

"By what name shall we know you?" he was asked.

"You shall call me the Knight of the Royal Heart," he said.

"And whose cause do you serve?"

"Hers whose beauty outshines the five-fold beauty in the Queen's
Gallery," said he, "hers who was mistress here and wrongly ousted--the
most peerless lady of Sussex, Proud Rosalind."

With that the stranger drew forth and flourished a blade of so
surpassing a kind that the knights, in whom scorn had vanquished mirth,
found envy vanquishing scorn. As for the ladies, they had ceased to
smile at the mention of Rosalind, whom none had seen, though all had
heard of the girl who had been turned from her ruin at Maudlin's whim;
and that this ragged lady should be vaunted over their heads was an
insult only equaled by the presence among their shining champions of
the Rusty Knight. For by this name only was he spoken thereafter.

Now you may think that the imperious stranger who warned his opponents
against laughing before their time, might well have been warned against
crowing before his. And alas! it transpired that he crowed not as the
cock crows, who knows the sun will rise; for at the first clash he
fell, almost unnoticed. And when the combatants disengaged, he had
disappeared. He was a subject for much mirth that evening; though the
men rankled for his sword and the women for a sight of his