e and looked at his coats-of-mail hanging vacant on the
wall, his banner covered with spider-webs, and his sword and axe rusting
there. "Ah, dear axe," sighed he (into his drinking-horn)--"ah, gentle
steel! that was a merry time when I sent thee crashing into the pate of
the Emir Abdul Melik as he rode on the right of Saladin. Ah, my sword,
my dainty headsman? my sweet split-rib? my razor of infidel beards! is
the rust to eat thine edge off, and am I never more to wield thee in
battle? What is the use of a shield on a wall, or a lance that has a
cobweb for a pennon? O Richard, my good king, would I could hear once
more thy voice in the front of the onset! Bones of Brian the Templar?
would ye could rise from your grave at Templestowe, and that we might
break another spear for honor and--and--" . . .

"And REBECCA," he would have said; but the knight paused here in rather
a guilty panic: and her Royal Highness the Princess Rowena (as she chose
to style herself at home) looked so hard at him out of her china-blue
eyes, that Sir Wilfrid felt as if she was reading his thoughts, and was
fain to drop his own eyes into his flagon.

In a word, his life was intolerable. The dinner hour of the twelfth
century, it is known, was very early; in fact, people dined at ten
o'clock in the morning: and after dinner Rowena sat mum under her
canopy, embroidered with the arms of Edward the Confessor, working with
her maidens at the most hideous pieces of tapestry, representing the
tortures and martyrdoms of her favorite saints, and not allowing a soul
to speak above his breath, except when she chose to cry out in her own
shrill voice when a handmaid made a wrong stitch, or let fall a ball of
worsted. It was a dreary life. Wamba, we have said, never ventured to
crack a joke, save in a whisper, when he was ten miles from home; and
then Sir Wilfrid Ivanhoe was too weary and blue-devilled to laugh; but
hunted in silence, moodily bringing down deer and wild-boar with shaft
and quarrel.

Then he besought Robin of Huntingdon, the jolly outlaw, nathless, to
join him, and go to the help of their fair sire King Richard, with a
score or two of lances. But the Earl of Huntingdon was a very different
character from Robin Hood the forester. There was no more conscientious
magistrate in all the county than his lordship: he was never known to
miss church or quarter-sessions; he was the strictest game-proprietor
in all the Riding, and sent scores of poache