LITMIR.BIZ

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in her hand.

      "Lord Robert, do clasp this troublesome brace for me. Strange you could not see what difficulty I have had to get ready! But I suppose you were so engaged fitting an arrow to pretty Gracy Fitzgerald's bow, that you had no eyes for any one else!"

      This was said half in pique, half laughingly; and holding, with a pouting lip, her snowy arm towards her esquire as she spoke, he gallantly received it, and with the merest effort in the world clasped the rebellious brace. But he did not release her soft hand without giving it a slight pressure, and looking into her face with an eloquent gaze, which she consciously met with eyes half downcast, yet beaming through their long dark lashes with a gentle fire that young love only could have kindled.

      "Now, Sir Esquire, fasten this glove."

      The youth bent till the black plume of his bonnet rested on her arm, and, with some difficulty apparently, for he was a very long time about it, succeeded in buttoning the silken strap across the blue-veined wrist; nor did he lift his head from the fair hand, which lay nestled like a bird in his beneath the thick covert of his drooping feather, ere he had touched it with his bold lip.

      "Ha, Sir Forester, is this a part of your service as squire of archery?" she demanded, with the blood mounting to her cheek in maidenly surprise; though the pouting smile on her mouth, which she vainly tried to turn into a frown, and the dancing light in her telltale eyes, betokened anything besides resentment at the bold deed; "I see I must resign you to my sly little cousin Gracy, and take her well-behaved esquire; doubtless you better understand her humour than you seem to do mine."

      By the time she had ended she had succeeded in calling up a small cloud on her brow, which struggled very hard to cast a shadow over the sunny light that played around her lovely mouth and was reflected back in a thousand rays from the deep wells of her black, Castilian eyes.

      "Forgive me, sweet Lady Kate," said the esquire, dropping on one knee—disguising his attitude to the eyes of others by gathering carelessly one or two arrows from the ground—to her eyes alone a suppliant. The expression of his face amusingly wavered between playful mockery and seriousness, as if greatly fearing, yet doubting much, that his daring act had really given offence: a sort of neutral ground between mirth and grief, with the advantage of enabling him to fall readily into the one or the other, as he should find the needle of her humour pointed.

      "See, then, you offend not again, sir," she said, laughing at the troubled expression of his serio-comic countenance. "Haste! choose me an arrow that tapers from the pile to the feather."

      "One that tapers each way from the middle will suit you better for shooting in this light wind," said the young esquire, the puzzled play of his handsome features changed to sunshine by her voice. As he spoke he brought a quiver full of arrows and poured them out at her feet, and, kneeling on the thick verdure, selected an arrow of the kind he had named.

      "No, no," she said, putting it aside; "they always curve from the line of sight; and, besides, fly unsteady."

      "Not in a wind, Kate. The fulness in the middle counteracts the weight of the ends, and drives it more evenly."

      "Do as you are bidden, Sir Esquire," she said. "Don't think now you are going to have your own way." A second arrow was placed in her hand by the youth.

      "Why, Lord Robert, what is the matter with your wits! This is an arrow of the same kind; and, besides, it is without a cock-feather. I shall have to call yonder handsome fisher's lad, who is watching me so admiringly, to my assistance."

      The esquire, without looking up, mechanically handed to her a third arrow, with the head broken and the feathers ruffled. Without being able to speak in her surprise, she looked quietly down and beheld the young man so intently contemplating one of her exquisite little feet, that twice she spoke to him ere he looked up to encounter her gaze of arch astonishment. It was very plain what had become of her esquire's wits. The youth blushed, and hastily rose to his feet; but the maiden could not disguise a little female vanity, though she shook her finger at him, and said mischievously,

      "Do you propose becoming a cordwainer, and making me a pair of slippers, Lord Robert, that you are so busy taking the dimensions of my foot?"

      "I would willingly become apprentice to the meanest cobbler, to be suffered to take the measure of that tiny foot, and fit it with a shoe," said the youth, with gallantry.

      The maiden laughed, and, unwilling to betray the feeling his words had created, said, "Do be quick, Lord Robert; my bow is not yet strung with our foolish idling here, and I shall be too late for the lists."

      As she spoke she grasped her bow firmly in the middle, and extending her hand, containing the string terminating with a loop, to the upper limb, she pulled smartly upward, pressing the limb downward at the same time with her left wrist, and skilfully and accurately carried the eye of the bow-string into the nock. Her bow, like those of her companions, was five feet in length, neatly made of dark wood highly polished, and rounded on the inner side to increase its power in shooting.

      "Well and featly done! That's a tough yew, and a man's strength could not have better done what your little fingers, with skill to guide them, I have just seen do. You were an apt pupil, young mistress, and do honour to old Dermot's lessons."

      Kate Bellamont turned and saw the old forester close at her side. "If I have any skill, good Cormac," she said, "I do owe it all to your kind teaching; and if I win the arrow this day, you shall have it as a birthday gift from me, to wear in your bonnet instead of your pipe."

      The forester lifted his bonnet with a gratified air, mingled with respect, at this expression of kindness from his lovely young mistress, and said,

      "I know you would give Cormac, sweet lady, even the fair white plume that graces your brow if you thought it would gratify the old man. God bless you, noble child; may you live to see many such bright birthdays as this!" The rough huntsman brushed a tear from his eyes as he spoke; for the experience of years had told him that clouds would obscure the bright sky of her young hopes, and that each returning birthday might be but a sad waymark to denote the slow passage of a life of sorrow and trial. "The countess has bid me come and see if you need my aid in fitting your shafts, that you delay."

      "No, no, Cormac," said the maiden, blushing; but directly she cried, "Yes, you can help me. I am undecided whether to shoot an arrow that tapers from the head to the feathers, or from the feathers to the head, or from the middle both ways."

      "What says Master Robert?" asked Dermot, smiling archly through one of his little gray eyes, the other, from the long habit of shutting it in shooting, having at last got to be so firmly closed up in a radiating network of fine wrinkles as to have been for the last ten years of his life invisible.

      "Pshaw, Cormac!" she cried, stooping till her snowy plumes shaded her burning cheek; "I did not ask Lord Robert, but you."

      "I have advised Lady Kate, forester, to shoot arrows that taper both to feather and pile," said the youth, haughtily.

      "And she chooses—"

      "Those that taper from the pile to the feather," said the maiden, quickly.

      "If the distance were seventy yards instead of fifty," said the forester, measuring the ground with his eye, "it would be a good shaft for a steady hand; but, if you will let me decide, I would recommend you to take the taper from the feather, especially as the air is in motion."

      "Your skill is at fault for once, old man," said the young noble, with a flushed brow; "the best bowmen in England—ay, Robin Hood himself, were he here this day—would teach you your craft better."

      "You are in error, Master Robert," said the forester, with some warmth, in defence of his profession; "and he who taught you that a double taper is better in a wind than—"

      "Hist, old graybeard! you know nothing of woodscraft; yonder fisher's lad will even tell you a shaft swelling in the middle will waver in its passage through the wind like a weathercock."

      "Nay, Master Robert—"

      "Speak again, old man, and I strike you!" said the young noble, imperiously, angry that his skill

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