and its fair wardress, there be one who in tiltand tourney can unhorse me, or draw blood from between the joints of mine harness.' If such champion may be found among thy gilded wooers, summon him, lady, in God's name, to aid thine appeal, and here lies my gage;" and as he spoke, he flung down his glove of mail on the floor with a force that made the hall resound, and the Lord of Courtenaye rock and quiver in his chair of state. ແ Gage for gage !" cried the Lady Isabelle, flinging down her glove of silk with desperate courage" Gage for gage!" !" - the fall of the soft light glove caused no sound, like the clank of de Monfort's heavy gauntlet; but ere the echo of the former had ceased, Sir Paladour had seized it, and brandishing it at de Monfort, announced his acceptance of the challenge, "if the lady deigned to accept such champion of her right," — and he bowed with blushing and deferential awe to the fair being for whom he was perilling fame and life.

"Valiant knight," said the lady, her cheek

glowing with a hue, and her form dilating to a grandeur more than mortal, as she saw the chosen of her heart, the first and boldest assertor of her rights" Valiant knight, I accept thee for my champion, and God and our Lady nerve thine arm to strike in the right of the defenceless and persecuted! Meanwhile, take and wear this favour for my sake; and may it prove a shirt of mail to a breast so bold and true!" And detaching an embroidered scarf from her ivory shoulders, she flung it round those of her kneeling champion.Long before this action of the lady, the knights had started from their trance, and a hundred voices claimed the combat in the cause of the Lady Isabelle.

"Come on-come all!" exclaimed their giant-like antagonist, with a savage but gleeful shout of defiance-tossing his huge arms like the branches of an oak in a storm-" Mass! it were mere sport to encounter scores of such velvet bodies and heads of feather! I will requite their new fence with certain convincing touches of the old discipline of tourney - I

shall be but half-breathed to encounter a hundred of such in the career, and toss them about like tennis-balls - mine health lacks such exercise. An' the court of the castle be not strewed to-morrow with scarfs and surcoats, plumes and favours, like a tapestried floor, or the path of a royal pageant, say there is no true manhood left in France."

"A boon, a boon, my Lord of Monfort!" cried the Lady Isabelle, in a voice whose wonted tone of imperious gaiety was exchanged for one of anxious supplication.

"And of what boon may not so fair a suitor be assured?" said de Monfort, involuntarily softened.

"that

"I claim as a boon," said the lady, your combat in the encounter to-morrow be the combat of Courtesy, not the bloody and mortal fight à l'Outrance." And she added, with a delicate and venial dissimulation, "Heaven forefend that the noble blood which should be cherished for the cause of holy church, were spent in the cause of a woman!"

"Thou wouldst have found thy boon hard to win," muttered De Monfort, "could I have guessed its purport. Ho, minion!" he added, in a tone of furious disappointment, to his page, striking at the lady's glove rudely with his foot, "take up that toy, hang it on some pillar in the castle-court, and let him that dreads to die shun to touch it with his lance to-morrow.-Lady, I doubt that this fence will prove sufficient barrier for how, in the combat of courtesy that thou hast claimed, can blood be drawn from betwixt the joints of my mail? otherwise, my grant is bootless as thy boon was trivial.”

"I put my trust in Heaven," replied the trembling beauty, raising her eyes upward a motion instantly followed by her attendants, who devoutly crossed themselves, uttering prayers to every saint for their lady's

rescue.

"For thee, boy," said De Monfort to Paladour, "I will turn pedagogue to thy vanity; and so whip this humour of valour out of thee,

that thou shalt turn as pale at the sight of a lady's favour as thou wouldst at the array of a bannered host."

"The hue of death must be on my cheek," said Paladour, "ere it turn pale at the voice of defenceless beauty, or the stirring summons to battle; - for the former, I need no instinct as man-for the latter, I lack no spirit as knight-yea, knight I say, and warrior, approved in a field where thou foughtest not," he exclaimed, maddening at the sight of De Monfort's cold and savage

sneer.

De Monfort sat amazed, if not awed, by the power of a voice that pealed round the hall, like "a trumpet with a silver sound;" he set down his untasted cup, in which he had been pledging the abbot of Normoutier, and looked as if expecting the silent defiance he was about to meet.

Sir Paladour, after again kissing the scarf which the lady had bestowed on him, and then proudly replacing it on his shoulders,