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Updated: August 25, 2024
Those few who found friends faithful and bold enough to afford them shelter, dragged those friends down in their own ruin. Just such a case was that of the father of the boy hero of this story, the blind Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth, Baron of Falworth and Easterbridge, who, though having no part in the plot, suffered through it ruin, utter and complete.
Now, with his eyes trained to the bigness of Devlen Castle, he looked around him with wonder and pity at his father's humble surroundings. He realized as he never else could have realized how great was the fall in fortune that had cast the house of Falworth down from its rightful station to such a level as that upon which it now rested.
Myles Falworth was but eight years of age at that time, and it was only afterwards, and when he grew old enough to know more of the ins and outs of the matter, that he could remember by bits and pieces the things that afterwards happened; how one evening a knight came clattering into the court-yard upon a horse, red-nostrilled and smeared with the sweat and foam of a desperate ride Sir John Dale, a dear friend of the blind Lord.
Myles stood looking upon the ground without once lifting his eyes, not knowing what to answer, for he was well aware that he was no match for Blunt with the broadsword. "Thou art afraid to fight me, Myles Falworth," said Blunt, tauntingly, and the bachelors gave a jeering laugh in echo. Then Myles looked up, and I cannot say that his face was not a trifle whiter than usual.
"Now what is it thou wouldst have, Walter Blunt?" said Myles, when both parties had met at the horse-block. "It is to say this to thee, Myles Falworth," said the other. "One time, not long sin, thou didst challenge me to meet thee hand to hand in the dormitory.
Myles Falworth was not of a kind that forgets or neglects a thing upon which the mind has once been set. Perhaps his chief objective since the talk with Sir James following his fight in the dormitory had been successful resistance to the exactions of the head of the body of squires. So one day he broached a matter to Gascoyne that had for some time been digesting in his mind.
"Why, this," said Blunt, wiping his bleeding lip. "That fellow, Myles Falworth, hath been breeding mutiny and revolt ever sin he came hither among us, and because he was thus mutinous I would punish him therefor." "In that thou liest!" burst out Myles. "Never have I been mutinous in my life." "Be silent, sir," said Sir James, sternly. "I will hear thee anon."
That enemy watcheth for thy father and for thee; shouldst thou dare raise thy head or thy fortune ever so little, he would haply crop them both, and that parlously quick. Myles Falworth, how dost thou dare to lift thine eyes to the Lady Alice de Mowbray?" Poor Myles stood silent and motionless. "Sir," said he at last, in a dry choking voice, "thou art right, and I have been a fool.
"It is passing strange that he should take so much notice of thee as to exchange blows with thee with his own hand. Haply thou art either very quick or parlous slow at arms." "It is quick that he is," said Gascoyne, speaking up in his friend's behalf. "For the second time that Falworth delivered the stroke, Sir James could not reach him to return; so I saw with mine own eyes."
The King, in spite of all the pressure brought to bear upon him, refused to restore the estates of Falworth and Easterbridge the latter of which had again reverted to the crown upon the death of the Earl of Alban without issue upon the grounds that they had been forfeited not because of the attaint of treason, but because of Lord Falworth having refused to respond to the citation of the courts.
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