filled. Even as it was, the Lord Scales
uttered a slight cry,--which might be either of anger or of pain,--and
lifting his axe with both hands, levelled a blow on the Burgundian's
helmet that well nigh brought him to his knee. And now for the space
of some ten minutes, the crowd with charmed suspense beheld the almost
breathless rapidity with which stroke on stroke was given and parried;
the axe shifted to and fro, wielded now with both hands, now the left,
now the right, and the combat reeling, as it were, to and fro,--so that
one moment it raged at one extreme of the lists, the next at the other;
and so well inured, from their very infancy, to the weight of mail were
these redoubted champions, that the very wrestlers on the village green,
nay, the naked gladiators of old, might have envied their lithe agility
and supple quickness.

At last, by a most dexterous stroke, Anthony Woodville forced the point
of his axe into the vizor of the Burgundian, and there so firmly did
it stick, that he was enabled to pull his antagonist to and fro at his
will, while the Bastard, rendered as blind as his horse by the stoppage
of the eye-hole, dealt his own blows about at random, and was placed
completely at the mercy of the Englishman. And gracious as the gentle
Sir Anthony was, he was still so smarting under many a bruise felt
through his dinted mail, that small mercy, perchance, would the Bastard
have found, for the gripe of the Woodville's left hand was on his foe's
throat, and the right seemed about to force the point deliberately
forward into the brain, when Edward, roused from his delight at that
pleasing spectacle by a loud shriek from his sister Margaret, echoed by
the Duchess of Bedford, who was by no means anxious that her son's axe
should be laid at the root of all her schemes, rose, and crying, "Hold!"
with that loud voice which had so often thrilled a mightier field, cast
down his warderer.

Instantly the lists opened; the marshals advanced, severed the
champions, and unbraced the count's helmet. But the Bastard's martial
spirit, exceedingly dissatisfied at the unfriendly interruption,
rewarded the attention of the marshals by an oath worthy his
relationship to Charles the Bold; and hurrying straight to the king, his
face flushed with wrath and his eyes sparkling with fire,--

"Noble sire and king," he cried, "do me not this wrong! I am not
overthrown nor scathed nor subdued,--I yield not. By every knightly law
till o