keen-eyed master armourer.

As soon as they had discovered such a sequestered holt, Laurence, who
had frequent experience of such rough-and-tumble encounters, stripped
off his doublet of purple velvet, and, turning the sleeve inside out,
he showed his brother that it was lined with a rough-surfaced felt
cloth almost of the nature of teasle. This being rubbed briskly upon
any dusty garment or fouled armour proved most excellent for restoring
its pristine gloss and beauty. The young men, being as it were born to
the trade and knowing that their armament must meet their father's
inexorable eye, as he passed along their lines with the Earl, rubbed
and polished their best, and when after half an hour's sharp work each
examined the other, not a speck or stain was left to tell of the
various casual incidents of the morning. Two bright, fresh-coloured
youths emerged from their thicket, immaculately clad, and with
countenances of such cherubic innocence, that my lord the Abbot
William of the great Cistercian Abbey of Dulce Cor, looking upon them
as with bare bowed heads they knelt reverently on one knee to ask his
blessing, said to his train, "They look for all the world like young
angels! It is a shame and a sin that two such fair innocents should be
compelled to join in aught ruder than the chanting of psalms in holy
service."

Whereat one of his company, who had been witness to their treatment of
the Angus provost and also of Laurence's encounter with the knight of
the black armour, was seized incontinently with a fit of coughing
which almost choked him.

"Bless you, my sons," said the Abbot, "I will speak to my nephew, the
Earl, concerning you. Your faces plead for you. Evil cannot dwell in