A sudden pause: the second man tries to leap so as to avoid the spear, his own similar weapon presented before him, but position gives Hubert advantage, and the second foe goes down the waves, dyeing them with his blood, raising his despairing hand, as he dies, out of the foaming torrent.
The third hesitates.
And now comes the real danger for Hubert: a flight of arrows across the stream—they rattle on his chain mail, and generally glance harmlessly off, but one or two find weak places, and although his vizor is down, Hubert knows that one unlucky, or, as the foe would say “lucky,” shot penetrating the eyelet might end sight and life together. So he blows his horn, which he had scorned to do before.
He was but imperfectly clad in armour, and was soon bleeding in divers unprotected places; but there he stood, spear in hand, and no third person had dared to cross.
But when they heard the horn, feeling that the chance of a raid was going, the third sprang. With one foot he attained the bank, and as Hubert was rather dizzy from loss of blood, avoided the spear thrust. But the young Englishman drove the dagger, which he carried in the left hand, into his throat as he rose from the stream. The fourth leapt. Hubert was just in time with the spear. The fifth hesitated—the flight of arrows, intermitted for the moment, was renewed.
Just then up came Lord Walter, the eldest son of the earl, with a troop of lancers, and Hubert reeled to the ground from loss of blood, while the Welsh sullenly retreated.
They bore him to the castle. A few light wounds, which had bled profusely from the leg and arm, were all that was amiss. Hubert’s ambition was attained, for he had slain four Welshmen with his own young hand. And those to whom “such things were a care” saw four lifeless, ghastly corpses circling for days round and round an eddy in the current below the castle, round and round till one got giddy and sick in watching them, but still they gyrated, and no one troubled to fish them out. They were a sign to friend and foe, a monument of our Hubert’s skill in slaying “wildcats.”
A few days later the Lord of Hereford arrived at the castle, and visited Hubert’s sick chamber, where he brought much comfort and joy. A fine physician was that earl; Hubert was up next day.
And what was the tonic which had given such a fillip to his system, and hurried on his recovery? The earl purposed to confer upon him the degree he pined for, as soon as he could bear his armour.
At first any knight could make a knight. Now, to check the too great profusion of such flowers of chivalry, the power to confer the accolade was commonly restricted to the greater nobles, and later still, as now, to royalty alone.