etal in him, if it comes to a pinch; it's a lesson to yon lords
too, save your quality, if they ever wish to ride roughshod over our
guilds and companies. But eno' of me.--Drawer, another stoup of the
clary--Now, gentle sir, may I make bold to ask news of yourself? I saw,
though I spake not before of it, that my Lord Montagu showed a cold face
to his kinsman. I know something of these great men, though I be but a
small one,--a dog is no bad guide in the city he trots through."

"My dear foster-brother," said the Nevile, "you had ever more brains
than myself, as is meet that you should have, since you lay by the steel
casque,--which, I take it, is meant as a substitute for us gentlemen
and soldiers who have not so many brains to spare; and I will willingly
profit by your counsels. You must know," he said, drawing nearer to the
table, and his frank, hardy face assuming a more earnest expression,
"that though my father, Sir Guy, at the instigation of his chief, the
Earl of Westmoreland, and of the Lord Nevile, bore arms at the first for
King Henry--"

"Hush! hush! for Henry of Windsor!"

"Henry of Windsor!--so be it! yet being connected, like the nobles I
have spoken of, with the blood of Warwick and Salisbury, it was ever
with doubt and misgiving, and rather in the hope of ultimate compromise
between both parties (which the Duke of York's moderation rendered
probable) than of the extermination of either. But when, at the battle
of York, Margaret of Anjou and her generals stained their victory by
cruelties which could not fail to close the door on all conciliation;
when the infant son of the duke himself was murdered, though a prisoner,
in cold blood; when my father's kinsman, the Earl of Salisbury, was
beheaded without trial; when the head of the brave and good duke,
who had fallen in the field, was, against all knightly and king-like
generosity, mockingly exposed, like a dishonoured robber, on the gates
of York, my father, shocked and revolted, withdrew at once from the
army, and slacked not bit or spur till he found himself in his hall at
Arsdale. His death, caused partly by his travail and vexation of spirit,
together with his timely withdrawal from the enemy, preserved his name
from the attainder passed on the Lords Westmoreland and Nevile; and my
eldest brother, Sir John, accepted the king's proffer of pardon, took
the oaths of allegiance to Edward, and lives safe, if obscure, in his
father's halls. Thou knowest, m