lodged, with his clerk, were next in the dormitory of the lads, and
even in the midst of the most excited brawlings the distant sound of his
harsh voice, "Silence, messieurs!" would bring an instant hush to the
loudest uproar.

It was into his grim presence that Myles was introduced by Gascoyne.
Sir James was in his office, a room bare of ornament or adornment or
superfluous comfort of any sort--without even so much as a mat of rushes
upon the cold stone pavement to make it less cheerless. The old one-eyed
knight sat gnawing his bristling mustaches. To anyone who knew him it
would have been apparent that, as the castle phrase went, "the devil sat
astride of his neck," which meant that some one of his blind wounds was
aching more sorely than usual.

His clerk sat beside him, with account-books and parchment spread upon
the table, and the head squire, Walter Blunt, a lad some three or four
years older than Myles, and half a head taller, black-browed, powerfully
built, and with cheek and chin darkened by the soft budding of his
adolescent beard, stood making his report.

Sir James listened in grim silence while Gascoyne told his errand.

"So, then, pardee, I am bid to take another one of ye, am I?" he
snarled. "As though ye caused me not trouble enow; and this one a cub,
looking a very boor in carriage and breeding. Mayhap the Earl thinketh I
am to train boys to his dilly-dally household service as well as to use
of arms."

"Sir," said Gascoyne, timidly, "my Lord sayeth he would have this one
entered direct as a squire of the body, so that he need not serve in the