y
master!"

They stood now in the black steed's stall.--an ample and high-vaulted
space, for halter never insulted the fierce destrier's mighty neck,
which the God of Battles had clothed in thunder. A marble cistern
contained his limpid drink, and in a gilded manger the finest wheaten
bread was mingled with the oats of Flanders. On entering, they found
young George, Montagu's son, with two or three boys, playing familiarly
with the noble animal, who had all the affectionate docility inherited
from an Arab origin. But at the sound of Warwick's voice, its ears rose,
its mane dressed itself, and with a short neigh it came to his feet, and
kneeling down, in slow and stately grace, licked its master's hand. So
perfect and so matchless a steed never had knight bestrode! Its hide
without one white hair, and glossy as the sheenest satin; a lady's
tresses were scarcely finer than the hair of its noble mane; the
exceeding smallness of its head, its broad frontal, the remarkable and
almost human intelligence of its eye, seemed actually to elevate its
conformation above that of its species. Though the race had increased,
generation after generation, in size and strength, Prince Richard still
marvelled (when, obedient to a sign from Warwick, the destrier rose, and
leaned its head, with a sort of melancholy and quiet tenderness, upon
the earl's shoulder) that a horse, less in height and bulk than the
ordinary battle-steed, could bear the vast weight of the giant earl in
his ponderous mail. But his surprise ceased when the earl pointed out
to him the immense strength of the steed's ample loins, the sinewy
cleanness, the iron muscle, of the stag-like legs, the bull-like breadth
of chest, and the swelling power of the shining neck.

"And after all," added the earl, "both in man and beast, the spirit
and the race, not the stature and the bulk, bring the prize. Mort Dieu,
Richard! it often shames me of mine own thews and broad breast,--I had
been more vain of laurels had I been shorter by the head!"

"Nevertheless," said young George of Montagu, with a page's pertness, "I
had rather have thine inches than Prince Richard's, and thy broad breast
than his grace's short neck."

The Duke of Gloucester turned as if a snake had stung him. He gave but
one glance to the speaker, but that glance lived forever in the boy's
remembrance, and the young Montagu turned pale and trembled, even before
he heard the earl's stern rebuke.

"Young magpies