“I shall wait on you, with your leave, at the isle in the river, where it is of custom, opposite the booths of the gold-workers,” quoth he, “about the hour of noon”; and so, saluting us, he went, as he said, to provide himself with friends.

“Blood of Judas!” quoth Robin, who swore terribly in his speech, “you have your hands full, young Norman.  He is but now crept out of the rank of pages, but when the French and English pages fought a valliance of late, under Orleans, none won more praise than he, who was captain of the French party.”

“He played a good sword?” I asked.

“He threw a good stone!  Man, it was a stone bicker, and they had lids of baskets for targes.”

“And he challenges me to the field,” I said hotly, “By St. Andrew!  I will cuff his ears and send him back to the other boys.”

“Norman, my lad, when were you in a stone bicker last?” quoth Randal; and I hung my head, for it was not yet six months gone since the sailors and we students were stoning each other in North Street.

“Yet he does play a very good sword, and is cunning of fence, for your comfort,” said Randal.  So I hummed the old lilt of the Leslies, whence, they say, comes our name—­

   Between the less lea and the mair,
   He slew the knight and left him there;—­

for I deemed it well to show a good face.  Moreover, I had some conceit of myself as a swordsman, and Randal was laughing like a foolbody at my countenance.

“Faith, you will make a spoon or spoil a horn, and—­let me have my laugh out—­you bid well for an archer,” said Randal; and Robin counselling me to play the same prank on the French lad’s sword as late I had done on his own, they took each of them an arm of mine, and so we swaggered down the steep ways into Chinon.

First I would go to the tailor and the cordwainer, and be fitted for my new splendours as an archer of the guard.

They both laughed at me again, for, said they very cheerfully, “You may never live to wear these fine feathers.”

But Randal making the reflection that, if I fell, there would be none to pay the shopmaster, they both shouted with delight in the street, so that passers-by turned and marvelled at them.  Clearly I saw that to go to fight a duel is one thing, and to go and look on is another, and much more gay, for my heart had no desire of all this merriment.  Rather would I have recommended my case to the saints, and chiefly to St. Andrew, for whose cause and honour I was about to put my life in jeopardy.  But shame, and the fear of seeming fearful, drove me to jest with the others—­such risks of dying unconfessed are run by sinful men!

Howbeit, they helped me to choose cloth of the best colour and fashion, laughing the more because I, being short of stature and slim, the tailor, if I fell, might well find none among the archers to purchase that for which, belike, I should have no need.