Uncle, you must
do something for me and my comrades ere we go."
"Well, boy?"
"Make us knights."
"Knights, lad? I thought you had been a belted knight this dozen years?"
"I might have been made a knight by many, after the French, fashion, many
a year agone. I might have been knight when I slew the white bear. Ladies
have prayed me to be knighted again and again since. Something kept me
from it. Perhaps" (with a glance at Herluin) "I wanted to show that an
English squire could be the rival and the leader of French and Flemish
knights."
"And thou hast shown it, brave lad!" said Brand, clapping his great hands.
"Perhaps I longed to do some mighty deed at last, which would give me a
right to go to the bravest knight in all Christendom, and say, 'Give me
the accolade, then! Thou only art worthy to knight as good a man as
thyself.'"
"Pride and vainglory," said Brand, shaking his head.
"But now I am of a sounder mind. I see now why I was kept from being
knighted,--till I had done a deed worthy of a true knight; till I had
mightily avenged the wronged, and mightily succored the oppressed; till I
had purged my soul of my enmity against my own kin, and could go out into
the world a new man, with my mother's blessing on my head."
"But not of the robbery of St.
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