than all, among them stood the Constable of France.  The two boys, Prince Edward and his cousin Henry of Lancaster, were stationed as pages on each side of the Princess, but as their play-fellow, Arthur, advanced with his uncle, they both sprang down the steps of the gallery to meet him, and each took a hand.  Edward, however, first bethinking himself of the respect which, Prince as he was, he owed to a belted Knight, made his reverence to Sir Eustace, who, at a sign from the Prince of Wales, mounted the steps and bent his knee to the ground before him.

“Nay, Sir Eustace,:  said the Prince, bending forward, “it is rather I who should kneel to you for pardon; I have used you ill, Eustace, and, I fear me, transgressed the pledge which I gave to your brother on the plain of Navaretta.”

“Oh, say not so, my gracious liege,” said Eustace, as tears gathered in his eyes,—­“it was but that your noble ear was deceived by the slanders of my foes!”

“True, Sir Eustace—­yet, once, Edward of England would not have heard a slanderous tale against one of his well-proved Knights without sifting it well.  But I am not as once I was—­sickness hath unnerved me, and, I fear me, hath often led me to permit what may have dimmed my fame.  Who would have dared to tell me that I should suffer my castles to be made into traps for my faithful Knights?  And now, Sir Eustace, that I am about to repair my injustice towards you, let me feel, as a man whose account for this world must ere long be closed, that I have your forgiveness.”

The Prince took the hand of the young Knight, who struggled hard with his emotion.  “And here is another friend,” he added—­“a firmer friend, though foe, than you have found some others.”

“Well met, my chivalrous godson,” said the Constable du Guesclin, holding out his hand.  “I rejoice that my neighbour, Oliver, did not put an end to your faits d’armes.”

“I marvel—­,” Eustace hardly found words between wonder and condolence.  The Prince caught the import of his hesitating sentences.

“He thinks you a prisoner, Sir Bertrand,” he said.  “No, Sir Eustace, Messire le Connetable is captive only in his good-will to you.  I wrote, to pray him to send me his witness to those last words of your brother, since you had ever appealed to him, and he replied by an offer, which does us too much honour, to become our guest.”

“I am no scribe, apart from my fairy Dame Tiphaine,” said Du Guesclin, abruptly.  “It cost me less pains to ride hither,—­besides that I longed to renew my old English acquaintances, and see justice done to you, fair godson.”

“Ha!  Sir Bertrand, thou recreant!—­so no other spell drew thee hither?  Thou hast no gallantry even for such an occasion as this!” said a gay voice.

“How should the ill-favoured Knight deal in gallantries?” said Du Guesclin, turning.  “Here is one far fitter for your Grace’s eyes.”