"You are a bold gentleman!" said one of the starers, coming up to the knight. "Do you know that these suits are my lord duke's? What are you going to do with that sword?"
"To slit the ears of any one who asks me impertinent questions," answered the knight, turning suddenly round upon him.
"Cast him out! cast him out!" cried a dozen voices. "Who is the beggarly rascal with his gray doublet? Cast him out!"
But the knight glanced round them with that sort of fierce, determined look, which tells that an adversary would have no easy task to master the heart that so lights up the eye; and though some still cried to cast him out, no one thought fit to approach too near.
"Peace! peace!" cried an old ecclesiastic, who had been sitting at the farther extreme of the hall, and who now advanced. "Peace! see ye not by his spurs the gentleman is a knight? My son," he continued, addressing Sir Osborne, "those arms are the noble Duke of Buckingham's, and out of respect for our patron, those who are admitted to this hall refrain from touching his ten suits. That which seems to have excited your curiosity was the prize at a tournament, given by an old friend of his grace some fifteen years ago, and it is one of the most handsome in his possession."
"I should not have touched those arms, my good father," answered the knight, "had I not thought that I recognised the suit; and was drawing the blade to see if it was the same."
"By what mark would you know it, young gentleman?" demanded the priest.
"If it be that I mean," replied Sir Osborne, "there is written on the blade--
I will win my right.
Or die in the fight."
"True, true!" said the clergyman. "There is so; but you must be too young to have been at that tourney."