fair damosel of our rude Scots measures for oats and bear? You talk
like the holder of a twenty-shilling land, James."

"I was saying," answered James Douglas, "that you would be a proper
man of your lance when you had laid a score or two bolls of good
Galloway meal to your ribs. English beef and beer are excellent, and
drive a lance home into an unarmed foe; but it needs good Scots oats
at the back of the spear-haft to make the sparks fly when knight meets
with knight and iron rings on iron."

"Indeed, cousin Jamie," said the Earl, "you have some right to your
porridge, for this day you have overturned well nigh a score of good
knights and come off unhurt and unashamed. Cousin William, how liked
you the whammel you got from James' lance in your final course?"

"Not that ill," said the silent Master; "I am indeed better at taking
than at giving. James is a stouter lance than I shall ever be--"

"Not so," cried jolly James. "Our Will never doth himself justice. He
is for ever reading Deyrolles and John Froissard in order to learn new
ways and tricks of fence, which he practises on the tilting ground,
instead of riding with a tight knee and the weight of his body behind
the shaft of ash. That is what drives the tree home, and so he gets
many a coup. Yet to fall, and to be up and at it again, is by far the
truer courage."

The Lady Sybilla laughed, as it seemed, heartily, yet with some little
bitterness in the sound of it.

"I declare you Douglases stick together like crabs in a basket.