right merry summer's day; and, the exercises in the tiltyard being over for the morning, two of the apprentices to chivalr

shed the descendants of the valiant Northmen who accompanied Rollo when he left Norway, sailed up the Seine, and seized on Neustria. But in one rather important respect there was a remarkable difference.

flowed tranquilly on, while the salmon leaped in its silver tide, and the trouts glided like silver darts through the clear stream, and the white and brindled cows

see the sacred badge on our shoulders, and when we have, even within the hour, learned that the ships of the gr

agine, Walter Espec, the picturesque scenery-the palm-trees, the fig-trees, the gardens with flowers, and vines, and citrons, and pomegranates; the Saracenic castles, the long caravans of camels, and the Eastern wo

palace of the Caliph; and if he refuses to render you justic

men. But my heart yearns for that far land; for there it is that I am like to hear tidings of him I have lost. Ah! credit me, brave Guy, that you, and such as you, little kno

s hand, and cast his eyes on the grou

rue and sworn friend; and I will aid your search. Nay, I know what you are going to say; but you do me wrong. I will not waste time in looking at the camels and the veiled women, of whom palmer and pi

'I fear me, brave Guy,' said Walter, after a brief silence, 'that the caliph is too great a potentate to be dealt with as you would wish. But, come what may, I am sworn to laugh at danger in the performance of a duty. My dreams, awake and asleep, are of him who is lost; and I fant

it shall, be done; and then we can go and conquer a principality, like Tancred

be beyond our grasp, if fortune favou

and ambitious; and no squire of your years is braver or more ambitious than you, Walter, or more expert in arms;

axims 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 th

e 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 wa

th secret

roof shall

resembled the letter T, groaned under massive sirloins. Attended by his jesters, the lord of the castle took his seat on the dais, which was reserved for his family and his guests of high rank; while the knights, squi

ed, the meal was by no means dull. The jesters and minstrels did their work. During the intervals the jesters exercised all their wit to divert the lord and his friends; and the minstrels, in the gallery set apart for their accommodation,

mp to his brother-in-arms, 'I marvel much whe

'methinks no seer less potent than the Knight of Ercildoune, whom the vulgar

erusalem,' suggested

named Acre and Jerusalem, my imagination had c