d
taper, he was escorted to the altar. It was at St. Mary's Priory, and
Prior Edward blessed the sword and girded it to the lad's side. No
one was present but the four, and when the good Prior had given the
benediction and had signed the cross upon his forehead, Myles's mother
stooped and kissed his brow just where the priest's finger had drawn the
holy sign. Her eyes brimmed bright with tears as she did so. Poor
lady! perhaps she only then and for the first time realized how big her
fledgling was growing for his nest. Henceforth Myles had the right to
wear a sword.

Myles had ended his fifteenth year. He was a bonny lad, with brown face,
curling hair, a square, strong chin, and a pair of merry laughing
blue eyes; his shoulders were broad; his chest was thick of girth; his
muscles and thews were as tough as oak.

The day upon which he was sixteen years old, as he came whistling home
from the monastery school he was met by Diccon Bowman.

"Master Myles," said the old man, with a snuffle in his voice--"Master
Myles, thy father would see thee in his chamber, and bade me send thee
to him as soon as thou didst come home. Oh, Master Myles, I fear me that
belike thou art going to leave home to-morrow day."

Myles stopped short. "To leave home!" he cried.

"Aye," said old Diccon, "belike thou goest to some grand castle to
live there, and be a page there and what not, and then, haply, a
gentleman-at-arms in some great lord's pay."

"What coil is this about castles and lords and gentlemen-at-arms?" said
Myles. "What talkest thou of, Diccon? Art thou jesting?"

"Nay," said Diccon, "I am not jesting. But go to thy father, and then
thou wilt presently know all. Only this I do say, that it is like thou
leavest us to-morrow day."

And so it was as Diccon had said; Myles was to leave home the very
next morning. He found his father and mother and Prior Edward together,
waiting for his coming.

"We three have been talking it over this morning," said his father, "and
so think each one that the time hath come for thee to quit this poor
home of ours. An thou stay here ten years longer, thou'lt be no more fit
to go then than now. To-morrow I will give thee a letter to my kinsman,
the Earl of Mackworth. He has thriven in these days and I have fallen
away, but time was that he and I were true sworn companions, and
plighted together in friendship never to be sundered. Methinks, as I
remember him, he will abide by his plighted troth