their age. They were not entitled to
claim it while below the rank of knighthood.

"You are too young for the appeal to battle."

"My lord," whispered one of his knights, "a similar case occurred
at Warkworth Castle when I was there: a page gave another the
direct lie as this one has done, and the earl permitted them to run
a course with blunted lances and fight it out; adjudging the
dismounted page to be in the wrong, as indeed he afterwards proved
to be."

"Let it be so," said Earl Simon, who had a devout belief in the
ordeal, as manifesting the judgment of the Unerring One. "We allow
the appeal, and it shall be decided this afternoon in the tilt
yard."

Blunted lances! Not very dangerous, our readers may think at first
thought. But the shock and the violent fall from the horse was
really the more dangerous part of the tournament. The point of the
lance seldom penetrated the armour of proof in which combatants
were encased.

The pages separated in great excitement. Most of them held with
Hubert--for Drogo's arrogant manners had not gained him many
friends. Much advice was given to the younger boy how to "go in and
win," and the poor lad was eager for the fight whereby his honour
was to be vindicated, as though victory and reputation were quite
secured, as indeed in his belief they were.

The ordeal! it seems full of superstition to us, unaccustomed to
believe in, or to realise, God's direct dealing with the world. But
men then thought that God must show the innocence of the accused
who thus appealed to Him, whether by battle or by the earlier forms
of ordeal {18}.

But was not the casting of lots in the Old Testament akin to the
idea, and are there not passages in the Levitical books prescribing
similar usages with the object of detecting innocence or guilt?

At all events, the ordeal was allowed to be decisive, and if it
were a capital charge, the headsman was at hand to behead the
convicted offender--convicted by the test to which he had appealed.

A peculiarly solemn order and ritual was observed in such appeals,
when the fight was to the death. The combatants confessed, and
received, what to one was probably his last Communion; and thus
avowing in the most solemn way their innocence before God and man,
they came to the lists. In cases where one of the party must of
necessity be perjured, the sin of thus profaning the Sacraments of
the Church was supposed to ensure his downfall the more certainly,
for