The next course was very well ridden also, the lances splintering, and Bowerman, although reeling from the shock, kept his seat and rode on to the end. Elated by his success, the natural boastfulness of the young man came out.
"Look to your seat, Sir Breton," he called out before the last course, "for I mean to topple thee out of it."
"Beshrew the lad for a braggart!" growled Sir John Trenchard, scandalised alike at the breach of etiquette and the boastfulness of the boy.
The Sire de Kervignac said nothing; he only courteously bowed, and awaited the signal to charge. It soon came, and they met as before, but with a different result.
The Breton knight, as expert as he was brave and strong, seeing how eager and boastful the young man was, determined to read him a lesson. As Bowerman leant well forward, too much so for a firm seat, instead of aiming his spear at the page's body, or, indeed, directing it at all, the Sire de Kervignac struck a violent blow with the handle or butt-end of his lance over the lance of his antagonist, beating it down, and breaking it all to pieces, with the further result that Bowerman, who was preparing to push with all his might against the expected resistance of the body of his opponent, meeting with no obstacle, and drawn still further over by the blow on his lance, overbalanced himself, and before he could recover his seat, a rude knock from the butt-end of his antagonist's spear, as he rode past, completed his discomfiture, and he fell headlong to the ground.
"'Twas all his own fault," said Tom o' Kingston. "The Frenchman never meant to hurt him, and would have left him alone, had he not been such a braggart. It ought to do him good."
It was so evident to all the crowd that Bowerman had drawn this fall upon himself that they applauded the knight, and had no words of sympathy for the esquire.
The only antagonist left who had not yet tried his luck was Ralph Lisle.
"That surely can't be Master Lisle, the new page?" said Mistress Bremeskete.
"Ay, but 'tis though; he sits stiffly, don't he?"