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"Let me have a weapon, and I shall not be the first of us who has fallen unmailed." "No," said Gerda, "it is my fancy that my champions shall be well armed. Open the small chest yonder." I did so, and in that lay a most beautiful byrnie and helm, if anything better than those we had been choosing from. It was the only suit here, and Gerda looked wistfully at it.

No time was lost; for King Richard, in his tunic and breeches as he was, in his deck shoes, without a helm, unmailed in any part, snatched up shield and axe. 'Who follows Anjou? he called out, then plunged into the sea. These eight were all the men in authority that Trenchemer held, except some clerks, fat men who loved not water.

Oman remarks that the battle was "of a very abnormal type for the twelfth century, since the side which had the advantage in cavalry made no attempt to use it, while that which was weak in the all-important arm made a creditable attempt to turn it to account by breaking into the hostile flank.... Wild rushes of unmailed clansmen against a steady front of spears and bows never succeeded; in this respect Northallerton is the forerunner of Dupplin, Halidon Hill, Flodden, and Pinkie."

Yea, from that morn thenceforward has my life been good indeed, The gain of to-day was goodly, and good to-morrow's need, And good the whirl of the battle, and the broil I wielded there, Till I fashioned the ordered onset, and the unhoped victory fair. And good were the days thereafter of utter deedless rest And the prattle of thy daughter, and her hands on my unmailed breast.

'Look, De Gurdun, he says, 'there goes the King unmailed. Wilt thou shoot him in the back, and so end all? 'By God, Eustace, says Gilles, 'that I will not. 'Why not, then? Gurdun said, 'Because I dare not. I am more afraid of him when he scorns me thus than when his face is upon me.

He judged that Sir Arnold must have returned from Faringdon; and if Gilbert met him now, riding over his own lands in the May morning, he would be unmailed and unsuspecting of attack. And should they not meet, Gilbert meant to ride up to the castle gate, and ask for the baron, and courteously propose to him that they should ride together into the wood.

The other letter, which like the first he kept unmailed, was a less honest and less incriminating letter, filled with plausible half truths, telling how he had just become aware at last through coming into possession of some old letters of the identity of the boy he had once had in his keeping and who had run away from him, an identity which he now hastened to reveal in the interests of tardy justice.

Those unmailed letters haunted him, however, day and night, so much so, in fact, that he took a journey to Boston one day and sought out the little cigar store again. But this time he had not mounted the stairs. His business was with the black-eyed boy.

But the leader of the Florentines put on his steel cap and drew the mail hood down over his shoulders, while all the others who were bareheaded did the same. "Sir," said the knight to Gilbert, "you should withdraw behind us, now that you have done us this great service. For presently there will be fighting here, and you are unmailed."

Of course she knew and her heart had been full of grief for him in these days of distress. Had she not written him and torn up unmailed a score of letters in which she had told him tenderly and unreservedly all she felt? But when she had seen him tonight she had forgotten that, remembering only that he had searched for her and found her and come to her.