pounders, boiling oil, and other artillery, with which the besieged received their enemies, was remarkable.  After a day’s fighting, Gurth and Wamba used to pick the arrows out of their intrepid master’s coat-of-mail, as if they had been so many almonds in a pudding.  ’Twas well for the good knight, that under his first coat-of armor he wore a choice suit of Toledan steel, perfectly impervious to arrow-shots, and given to him by a certain Jew, named Isaac of York, to whom he had done some considerable services a few years back.

If King Richard had not been in such a rage at the repeated failures of his attacks upon the castle, that all sense of justice was blinded in the lion-hearted monarch, he would have been the first to acknowledge the valor of Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, and would have given him a Peerage and the Grand Cross of the Bath at least a dozen times in the course of the siege:  for Ivanhoe led more than a dozen storming parties, and with his own hand killed as many men (viz, two thousand three hundred and fifty-one) within six, as were slain by the lion-hearted monarch himself.  But his Majesty was rather disgusted than pleased by his faithful servant’s prowess; and all the courtiers, who hated Ivanhoe for his superior valor and dexterity (for he would kill you off a couple of hundreds of them of Chalus, whilst the strongest champions of the Kings host could not finish more than their two dozen of a day), poisoned the royal mind against Sir Wilfrid, and made the King look upon his feats of arms with an evil eye.  Roger de Backbite sneeringly told the King that Sir Wilfrid had offered to bet an equal bet that he would kill more men than Richard himself in the next assault:  Peter de Toadhole said that Ivanhoe stated everywhere that his Majesty was not the man he used to be; that pleasures and drink had enervated him; that he could neither ride, nor strike a blow with sword or axe, as he had been enabled to do in the old times in Palestine:  and finally, in the twenty-fifth assault, in which they had very nearly carried the place, and in which onset Ivanhoe slew seven, and his Majesty six, of the sons of the Count de Chalus, its defender, Ivanhoe almost did for himself, by planting his banner before the King’s upon the wall; and only rescued himself from utter disgrace by saving his Majesty’s life several times in the course of this most desperate onslaught.

Then the luckless knight’s very virtues (as, no doubt, my respected readers know,) made him enemies amongst the men—­nor was Ivanhoe liked by the women frequenting the camp of the gay King Richard.  His young Queen, and a brilliant court of ladies, attended the pleasure-loving monarch.  His Majesty would transact business in the morning, then fight severely from after breakfast till about three o’clock in the afternoon; from which time, until after midnight, there was nothing but jigging and singing, feasting and revelry, in the royal tents.  Ivanhoe, who was asked as a matter of ceremony, and forced to attend