from the title-page, with its boar smelling at the rose-bush, to the
graduated lines and the _Finis_. This book I read through from boar to
finis--no small undertaking, and partly, no doubt, under its
influences, I became about this time conscious of a desire after
honour, as yet a notion of the vaguest. I hardly know how I escaped the
taking for granted that there were yet knights riding about on
war-horses, with couched lances and fierce spurs, everywhere as in days
of old. They might have been roaming the world in all directions,
without my seeing one of them. But somehow I did not fall into the
mistake. Only with the thought of my future career, when I should be a
man and go out into the world, came always the thought of the sword
which hung on the wall. A longing to handle it began to possess me, and
my old dream returned. I dared not, however, say a word to my uncle on
the subject. I felt certain that he would slight the desire, and
perhaps tell me I should hurt myself with the weapon; and one whose
heart glowed at the story of the battle between him on the white horse
with carnation mane and tail, in his armour of blue radiated with gold,
and him on the black-spotted brown, in his dusky armour of despair,
could not expose himself to such an indignity.




CHAPTER VII.


THE SWORD ON THE WALL.

Where possession was impossible, knowledge might yet be reached: could
I not learn the story of the ancient weapon? How came that which had