United States or Bahrain ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Tell me, Myles Falworth, an thou wert a knight and of rank fit to run a joust with the Sieur de la Montaigne, wouldst thou dare encounter him in the lists?" The Earl's question fell upon Myles so suddenly and unexpectedly that for a moment or so he stood staring at the speaker with mouth agape. Meanwhile the Earl sat looking calmly back at him, slowly stroking his beard the while.
"Falworth says we shall not fetch it," answered one of the lads, a boy by the name of Gosse. "What mean ye by that, Falworth?" the young man called to Myles. Myles's heart was beating thickly and heavily within him, but nevertheless he spoke up boldly enough. "I mean," said he, "that from henceforth ye shall fetch and carry for yourselves."
He had not seen that face since he was a little child eight years old, but now that he beheld it again, it fitted instantly and vividly into the remembrance of the time of that terrible scene at Falworth Castle, when he had beheld the then Lord Brookhurst standing above the dead body of Sir John Dale, with the bloody mace clinched in his hand.
Myles Falworth, thou wert born upon a lucky day!" "Sir," cried Myles, and then stopped short. Then, "Sir," he cried again, "didst thou say it the horse was to be mine?" "Aye, it is to be thine." "My very own?" "Thy very own." How Myles Falworth left that place he never knew. He was like one in some strange, some wonderful dream.
Thinkest thou I would have borne so patiently with another one of ye squires had such an one held secret meeting with my daughter and niece, and tampered, as thou hast done, with my household, sending through one of my people that letter? Go to; thou art a fool, Myles Falworth!" Myles stood staring at the Earl without making an effort to speak.
The Earl took it in his hand, turned it this way and that, looked first at the bearer, then at the packet, and then at the bearer again. "Who art thou?" said he; "and what is the matter thou wouldst have of me?" "I am Myles Falworth," said the lad, in a low voice; "and I come seeking service with you." The Earl drew his thick eyebrows quickly together, and shot a keen look at the lad.
From the time the family escaped from Falworth Castle that midwinter night to the time Myles was sixteen years old he knew nothing of the great world beyond Crosbey-Dale. A fair was held twice in a twelvemonth at the market-town of Wisebey, and three times in the seven years old Diccon Bowman took the lad to see the sights at that place.
The fear Myles had felt was now beginning to dissolve in rising wrath. "Nay," said he, stoutly, "I be no Lord and I be no Prince, but I be as good as thou. For am I not the son of thy onetime very true comrade and thy kinsman to wit, the Lord Falworth, whom, as thou knowest, is poor and broken, and blind, and helpless, and outlawed, and banned?
There was no one in the office but Sir James and himself, and Myles, without concealing anything, told, point by point, the whole trouble. Sir James sat looking steadily at him for a while after he had ended. "Never," said he, presently, "did I know any one of ye squires, in all the time that I have been here, get himself into so many broils as thou, Myles Falworth.
"But look thee, Myles Falworth," said Gascoyne, "all this is not to be done withouten fighting shrewdly. Wilt thou take that fighting upon thine own self? As for me, I tell thee I love it not." "Why, aye," said Myles; "I ask no man to do what I will not do myself." Gascoyne shrugged his shoulders. "So be it," said he.
Word Of The Day