The next morning early, when Walter descended the stairs, he found Ralph Smith waiting for him. His face was strapped up with plaster and he wore his arm in a sling, for his armor had been twice cut through as he led his party in through the sally-port. "How goes it with you, Ralph?" Walter said. "Not much the worse, I hope, for your hard knocks?" "Not a whit," Ralph replied cheerfully, "and I shall be all right again before the week is out; but the leech made as much fuss over me as if I had been a girl, just as though one was not accustomed to hard knocks in a smithy. Those I got yesterday were not half so hard as that which you gave me the day before. My head rings yet with the thought of it. But I have not come to talk about myself. Is the story true which they tell of you, Master Walter, that you are not the son of Giles the bowyer, but of a great noble?" "Not of a great noble, Ralph, but of a gallant knight, which is just as good. My father was killed when I was three years old, and my mother brought me to Bertha, the wife of Giles the bowyer, who had been her nurse in childhood. I had forgotten all that had passed, and deemed myself the son of the good citizen, but since I have heard the truth my memory has awakened somewhat, and I have a dim recollection of a lordly castle and of my father and mother." "And they say, Walter, that you are going with Sir Walter Manny, with the force which is just sailing to the assistance of Lady de Montford?" "That is so, Ralph, and the good knight has taken me among his esquires, young as I am, although I might well have looked for nothing better than to commence, for two years at least, as a page, seeing that I am but eighteen now. Now I shall ride with him into the battles and shall have as good a chance as the others of gaining honor and winning my spurs." "I have made up my mind that I will go with you, Master Walter, if you will take me; each squire has a man-at-arms who serves him, and I will give you good and faithful service if you will take me with you. I spoke to the smith, my master, last night, when I heard the news, and as my apprenticeship is out next week he was willing enough to give me the few days which remain. Once out of my apprenticeship I may count to be a man, and seeing that I am nineteen, and as I may say well grown of my years, methinks I am fit for service as a man-at-arms, and I would rather fight behind you than labor all my life in the smithy."