e
give you her colours and bid you wear them at a tourney?"

Walter coloured hotly.

"Ah! I have touched you," laughed the armourer; "come now, out with the
truth. My lad," he added more gravely, "there is no shame in it; you
know that I have always encouraged your wishes to be a soldier, and have
done my best to render you as good a one as any who draws sword 'neath
the king's banner, and assuredly I would not have taken all these pains
with you did I think that you were always to wear an iron cap and trail
a pike. I too, lad, hope some day to see you a valiant knight, and have
reasons that you wot not of, for my belief that it will be so. No man
rises to rank and fame any the less quickly because he thinks that
bright eyes will grow brighter at his success."

"But, Geoffrey, you are talking surely at random. The Lady Edith Vernon
is but a child; a very beautiful child," he added reverently, "and such
that when she grows up, the bravest knight in England might be proud
to win. What folly for me, the son of a city bowyer, and as yet but an
apprentice, to raise mine eyes so high!"

"The higher one looks the higher one goes," the armourer said
sententiously. "You aspire some day to become a knight, you may well
aspire also to win the hand of Mistress Edith Vernon. She is five years
younger than yourself, and you will be twenty-two when she is seventeen.
You have time to make your way yet, and I tell you, though why it
matters not, that I would rather you set your heart on winning Mistress
Edith Vernon than any other heiress of broad lands in merry England. You
have saved her life, and so have made the first step and a long one.
Be ever brave, gentle, and honourable, and, I tell you, you need not
despair; and now, lad, we have already lost too much time in talking;
let us to our work."

That evening Walter recalled to Geoffrey his promise to tell him the
causes which had involved England in so long and bloody a war with
France.

"It is a tangled skein," Geoffrey said, "and you must follow me
carefully. First, with a piece of chalk I will draw upon the wall the
pedigree of the royal line of France from Phillip downwards, and then
you will see how it is that our King Edward and Phillip of Valois came
to be rival claimants to the throne of France.

"Now, you see that our King Edward is nephew of Charles le Bel, the last
King of France, while Phillip of Valois is only nephew of Phillip le
Bel, the father of Charles. E