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Perfect silence honored the Hon. Samuel Budd. The Mayor was nodding vigorous approval, the jeering ones kept still, and when after the last deep-toned word passed like music from his lips the silence held sway for a little while before the burst of applause came. Every knight had straightened in his saddle and was looking very grave. Marston’s eyes never left the speaker’s face, except once, when they turned with an unconscious appeal, I thought, to the downcast face of Blight–whereat the sympathetic little sister seemed close to tears. The Knight of the Cumberland shifted in his saddle as though he did not quite understand what was going on, and once Mollie, seeing the eyes through the mask-holes fixed on her, blushed furiously, and little Buck grinned back a delighted recognition. The Hon. Sam sat down, visibly affected by his own eloquence; slowly he wiped his face and then he rose again.

“Your colors, Sir Knights,” he said, with a commanding wave of his truncheon, and one by one the knights spurred forward and each held his lance into the grandstand that some fair one might tie thereon the colors he was to wear. Marston, without looking at the Blight, held his up to the little sister and the Blight carelessly turned her face while the demure sister was busy with her ribbons, but I noticed that the little ear next to me was tingling red for all her brave look of unconcern. Only the Knight of the Cumberland sat still.

“What!” said the Hon. Sam, rising to his feet, his eyes twinkling and his mask of humor on again; “sees this masked springal”–the Hon. Sam seemed much enamored of that ancient word–“no maid so fair that he will not beg from her the boon of colors gay that he may carry them to victory and receive from her hands a wreath therefor?” Again the Knight of the Cumberland seemed not to know that the Hon. Sam’s winged words were meant for him, so the statesman translated them into a mutual vernacular.

“Remember what I told you, son,” he said. “Hold up yo’ spear here to some one of these gals jes’ like the other fellows are doin’,” and as he sat down he tried surreptitiously to indicate the Blight with his index finger, but the knight failed to see and the Blight’s face was so indignant and she rebuked him with such a knife-like whisper that, humbled, the Hon. Sam collapsed in his seat, muttering:

“The fool don’t know you–he don’t know you.”

For the Knight of the Cumberland had turned the black horse’s head and was riding, like Ivanhoe, in front of the nobles and ladies, his eyes burning up at them through the holes in his white mask. Again he turned, his mask still uplifted, and the behavior of the beauties there, as on the field of Ashby, was no whit changed: “Some blushed, some assumed an air of pride and dignity, some looked straight forward and essayed to seem utterly unconscious of what was going on, some drew back in alarm which was perhaps affected, some endeavored to forbear smiling and there were two or three who laughed outright.” Only none “dropped a veil over her charms” and thus none incurred the suspicion, as on that field of Ashby, that she was “a beauty of ten years’ standing” whose motive, gallant Sir Walter supposes in defence, however, was doubtless “a surfeit of such vanities and a willingness to give a fair chance to the rising beauties of the age.” But the most conscious of the fair was Mollie below, whose face was flushed and whose brown fingers were nervously twisting the ribbons in her lap, and I saw Buck nudge her and heard him whisper:

“Dave ain’t going to pick YOU out, I tell ye. I heered Mr. Budd thar myself tell him he HAD to pick out some other gal.”

“You hush!” said Mollie indignantly.