"Will you not try your arm, noble sir?" asked Sir Philip, turning to Hal of Hadnock.
"Willingly, willingly," replied the guest; "but Sir Henry Dacre has not yet shown his skill."
"He will not do much," said Catherine Beauchamp, in a low tone.
"Fie, Kate," cried Isabel, who overheard her; "that is untrue, as well as unkind."
As she spoke, Dacre took the bar, which had been brought back by one of the pages, and, without pausing to poise it carefully, as the rest had done, cast it within a foot or two of the spot which it had reached when sent from the hand of Woodville.
Hal of Hadnock then advanced, looking round with a gay laugh to the ladies, and saying, "I am upon my mettle before such bright eyes. Here, boy, give me the bar."
The page placed it in his hand; and, setting his right foot upon the mark where the others had stood, he swung himself gracefully backward and forward on one leg, for a moment, and then tossed the bar in air. So light, so easy, was his whole movement, that no one expected to see the iron go half the distance it had done before; but, to the surprise of all, it flew from his hand as if expelled from some of the military engines of the day, and, striking the ground full twenty paces farther than it had yet done, bounded up off the sward and rolled on beyond.
"Well delivered! well delivered!" exclaimed Sir Philip Beauchamp; and the men and boys around clapped their bands and cried "Hurrah!"
"I will send it farther or break my arm," cried Richard of Woodville.
"If you do, I will beat you by a toise," replied Hal of Hadnock, laughing. But they all strove in vain; no one could toss the bar within several yards of the stranger's mark.