en o'clock the next day from the walls of Evesham Castle a body
of archers one hundred and fifty strong were seen advancing in solid
array.

"Think you, Sir Rudolph," one of his friends, Sir Hubert of Gloucester,
said to him, "that these varlets think of attacking the castle?"

"They might as well think of scaling heaven," Sir Rudolph said. "Evesham
could resist a month's siege by a force well equipped for the purpose;
and were it not that good men are wanted for the king's service, and
that these villains shoot straight and hard, I would open the gates of
the castle and launch our force against them. We are two to one as
strong as they, and our knights and mounted men-at-arms could alone
scatter that rabble."

Conspicuous upon the battlements a gallows had been erected.

The archers stopped at a distance of a few hundred yards from the
castle, and Sir Cuthbert advanced alone to the edge of the moat.

"Sir Rudolph of Eresby, false knight and perjured gentleman," he shouted
in a loud voice, "I, Sir Cuthbert of Evesham, do denounce you as
foresworn and dishonored, and do challenge you to meet me here before
the castle in sight of your men and mine, and decide our quarrel as
Heaven may judge with sword and battle-ax."

Sir Rudolph leaned over the battlements, and said: "It is too late,
varlet. I condescended to challenge you before, and you refused. You
cannot now claim what you then feared to accept. The sun on the dial
approaches noon, and unless you surrender yourself before it reaches the
mark, I will keep my word, and the traitress, your mother, shall swing
from that beam."

Making a sign to two men-at-arms, these brought forward Dame Editha and
so placed her on the battlements that she could be seen from below. Dame
Editha was still a very fair woman, although nigh forty years had rolled
over her head. No sign of fear appeared upon her face, and in a firm
voice she cried to her son:

"Cuthbert, I beg--nay, I order you to retire. If this unknightly lord
venture to carry out his foul threats against me, let him do so. England
will ring with the dastardly deed, and he will never dare show his face
again where Englishmen congregate. Let him do his worst. I am prepared
to die."

A murmur rose from the knights and men-at-arms standing round Sir
Rudolph. Several of his companions had from the first, wild and
reckless as they were, protested against Sir Rudolph's course, and it
was only upon his solemn assurance t