favour us,' said Walter, with a calm smile.

'Oh, fortune ever favours the brave,' exclaimed Guy; 'and I hold that
nothing is impossible to men who are brave and ambitious; and no squire
of your years is braver or more ambitious than you, Walter, or more
expert in arms; albeit you never utter a boast as to your own feats,
while no one is more ready to praise the actions of others.'

'Even if I had anything to boast of,' replied Walter, 'I should refrain
from so doing; and therein I should only be acting according to the
maxims of chivalry; for you know we are admonished to be dumb as to our
own deeds, and eloquent in praise of others; and, moreover, that if the
squire is vainglorious, he is not worthy to become a knight, and that he
who is silent as to the valour of others is a thief and a robber.'

And thus conversing, the brothers-in-arms returned to the castle, and
entered the great hall, which was so spacious and so high in the roof
that a man on horseback might have turned a spear in it with all the
ease imaginable. It was, indeed, a stately apartment; the ceiling
consisting of a smooth vault of ashlar-work, the stones being curiously
joined and fitted together; and the walls and roof decorated by some of
those great painters who flourished in England under the patronage of
King Henry and his fair and accomplished queen, Eleanor of Provence.
Here was represented the battle of Hastings; there the siege of
Jerusalem by the Crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon and Robert
Curthose; here the battle of the Standard; there the signing of the
Great Charter by King John, under the oak of Runnymede. Around the hall
might be traced the armorial bearings of the lord of the castle and the
chief families with whom the lord of the castle was allied by blood--the
three water-budgets of De Roos; the three Katherine-wheels of Espec; the
engrailed cross of De Vesci; the seven blackbirds of Merley; the lion
argent of Dunbar in its field of gules; and the ruddy lion of Scotland,
ramping in gold; while on the roof was depicted the castle itself, with
gates, and battlements, and pinnacles, and towers; and there also, very
conspicuous, was the form of a rose, and around it was inscribed in
Gothic letters the legend--

He who doth secrets reveal,
Beneath my roof shall never live.

It was ten o'clock--in that age the hour of dinner--when Walter Espec
and Guy Muschamp entered the great hall of the castle, and, the
h