one day--"I tell thee I will never serve them. Prithee, what
shame can be fouler than to do such menial service, saving for one's
rightful Lord?"

"Marry!" quoth Gascoyne; "I reason not of shame at this or that. All I
know is that others serve them who are haply as good and maybe better
than I be, and that if I do not serve them I get knocked i' th' head
therefore, which same goeth soothly against my stomach."

"I judge not for thee," said Myles. "Thou art used to these castle
ways, but only I know that I will not serve them, though they be thirty
against me instead of thirteen."

"Then thou art a fool," said Gascoyne, dryly.

Now in this matter of service there was one thing above all others that
stirred Myles Falworth's ill-liking. The winter before he had come to
Devlen, Walter Blunt, who was somewhat of a Sybarite in his way, and who
had a repugnance to bathing in the general tank in the open armory court
in frosty weather, had had Dick Carpenter build a trough in the corner
of the dormitory for the use of the bachelors, and every morning it was
the duty of two of the younger squires to bring three pails of water to
fill this private tank for the use of the head esquires. It was seeing
two of his fellow-esquires fetching and carrying this water that Myles
disliked so heartily, and every morning his bile was stirred anew at the
sight.

"Sooner would I die than yield to such vile service," said he.

He did not know how soon his protestations would be put to the test.

One night--it was a week or two after Myles had come to Devlen--Blunt
was called to attend the Earl at livery. The livery was the last meal of
the day, and was served with great pomp and ceremony about nine o'clock
at night to the head of the house as he lay in bed. Curfew had not yet
rung, and the lads in the squires' quarters were still wrestling and
sparring and romping boisterously in and out around the long row of rude
cots in the great dormitory as they made ready for the night. Six or
eight flaring links in wrought-iron brackets that stood out from the
wall threw a great ruddy glare through the barrack-like room--a light of
all others to romp by. Myles and Gascoyne were engaged in defending the
passage-way between their two cots against the attack of three other
lads, and Myles held his sheepskin coverlet rolled up into a ball and
balanced in his hand, ready for launching at the head of one of the
others so soon as it should rise from behi