He rolled backwards on the ground, and so vigorous had been
the attack, that his horse's back was broken, and they lay together,
groaning piteously, besmeared with blood and dust, to the sore dismay of
his companions. Stanley suddenly alighted, and helped the pages to undo
his armour; but ere his beaver could be unclasped he had fainted by loss
of blood, and being borne off the field, he shortly afterwards expired.

The king was mightily pleased with this great prowess of the victor,
insomuch that he knighted him on the spot, and, according to the old
ballad, gave him goodly manors--

"For his hire,
Wing, Tring, and Iving, in Buckinghamshire."

He had so won, likewise, on the hitherto impenetrable disposition of
Isabella, that when he came to render his homage at her feet, she
trembled and could scarcely give the customary reply.

Raising his visor, and uncovering his helmet from the grand guard--a
plate protecting the left side of the face, shoulder, and breast--he
made a lowly obeisance at the gate of his mistress's pavilion, at the
same time presenting the stolen favour he had now so nobly won. With a
tremulous hand she bound it round his arm.

"Nay, thy chaplet, lady," shouted a score of tongues from the
inquisitive spectators. Isabella untied a rich chaplet of goldsmith's
work, ornamented with rose-garlands, from her hair, and threw it over
his helmet. Still armed with the gauntlets, which, either through hurry
or inadvertence, he had neglected to throw aside, as was the general
courtesy for the occasion, the knight seized her hand, and with a grasp
gentle for any other occasion, pressed it to his lips. The lady uttered
a subdued shriek, whether from pain or surprise, it boots not now to
inquire; mayhap, it was the remembrance of the mailed hand she had felt
in her dream, and to which her fingers, yet tingling with the pressure,
bore a sufficient testimony. Sir John bent lowlier than before, with one
hand on his breast, in token of contrition. A thousand strange fancies,
shapeless and undefined, rushed by, as the maiden looked on the warrior.
It was the very crisis of her dream; her heart seemed as though it would
have leapt the walls of its tenement,--and she was fain to hide her face
under the folds of her mantle.

"Now, on my halidome," said the king, "there be two doves whose cooing
would be the better for a little honest speech. Poor hearts! it were a
pity their tongues had