"By my halidame," or something of that kind, and most probably ended by having the aforesaid base varlet pitched neck and crop into the lowest dungeon beneath the castle to amuse himself after the fashion of the gentleman who stayed so many years in Chillon's dungeon, deep and old. "Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic," were then of no account; for the knights of old, when they had anything to do with a deed, made their marks with their swords. Well, in these good old times, when knights, troubadours, damsels in distress, tourneys, tyrannical barons, and all those most romantic accessories for keeping up the aforesaid good old times, flourished upon our soil, there stood a goodly castle at Stanstead, of the same breed as those at Bishop Stortford, and Saffron Walden, and a great many other places that don't concern the thread of our story the slightest bit in the world; and in this said flint and mortar, thick-walled, uncomfortable building, where there was neither gas, glass, nor china, dwelt one Sir Aylmer de Mountfitchett, a tremendous swell in his way, one who conceived that he had only to look to conquer, like the Roman barbarian he had once heard tell of as having visited this isle. Now Sir Aylmer had come in for his property early in life, from the fact of his father, who was own brother to the celebrated Red Cross Knight, who came home and put the warder into such a ferment, making him blow his horn so loudly, and call till he was hoarse, at a time when a voice lozenge, or a "haporth" of Spanish liquorice could not have been had for love nor money--well! from the fact of his father having rubbed his head so sharply against the edge of a pagan's scimitar that it--that is to say, Sir Aylmer's father's head--fell off, and was lost, so that his brother came home from the holy wars without him; and young Sir Aylmer went into mourning by stepping into his father's shoes, and doing a bill with the Jew of the neighbourhood--payable at sight, fifty per cent, interest; and he took a third in cash, a third in pictures, and the remainder in Bass's pale ale and best French kid gloves. Now as soon as the young knight could have it all his own way, he had the best suit of armour well rubbed up; the best horse in the stable well rubbed down; put an extra quantity of bears' grease upon his hair-- the hair of his head, for the mirrors of those days were so imperfect that he could not discover his beard; and lastly he sallied forth like a true knight in search of adventure. Now if I were to write the whole of the adventures of this gallant knight, I should require the entire space of the _Times_ every day, and have to keep on writing "to be continued in our next" until there was enough to form a respectable library; but as either the reader or the writer _might_ be fatigued, I content myself with relating the influence that the great passion first had upon the gallant young knight.