Now, it was the suit of Guendolen and Aradas, that Sir Yvo should appoint his young esquire his champion to do battle for the judgment of God--for they were irrevocably convinced--what, between their real faith in the justice of this cause, and the zealous trust, of those who love, in the superiority of the beloved, and the generous confidence of youth in its own glowing and impulsive valor--that Aradas would surely beat the traitor down, and win the spurs of gold, to which he so passionately aspired. But the clear-headed veteran regarded matters with a cooler and perhaps a wiser eye. He knew Sir Foulke d'Oilly for a trained, experienced, and all-practiced soldier; not only brave at all times, and brave among the bravest--but a champion, such as there were few, and to be beaten only by a champion. He knew him also desperate, and fighting his last stake. He foresaw that, even for himself, the felon knight, unless the sense of guilt should paralyze his heart, or the visible judgment of God be interposed in the heat of battle--a thing in those days scarcely to be looked for--would prove no easy bargain in the lists; and, how highly soever he might estimate his young esquire's courage and prowess, he yet positively refused to allow him to assume the place of appellant in the lists; and denied utterly that such a conflict, being the most solemn and awful of appeals to the Almighty on his judgment-seat, was any proper occasion for the striving after spurs of gold, or aiming at the honors of knighthood. So the lovers were obliged to decline into hopes of some indefinite future chance; and did decline into despondent and listless apathy, until, two days only before that appointed for the departure of the company into Lancashire, fortune or fate, which you will, thought fit to take the whole matter into its own hands, and to decide the much-vexed question of the championship by the misstep of a stumbling palfrey. After having ridden all day long on a stout, sure-footed cob, which he had backed for ten years, without knowing him to make a solitary blunder, marking trees for felling, and laying out new plantations with his foresters, Sir Yvo was wending his way toward the castle gates, across the great home-park, when, a small blind ditch crossing his path, he put the pony at it in a canter. Startled by some deer, which rose up suddenly out of the long fern, growing thick among the oak-trees, the pony shyed, set his forefeet in the middle of the drain, and came down on his head, throwing his heavy rider heavily on the hard frozen ground. A dislocated shoulder was the consequence; and, though it was speedily reduced, and no ill consequences followed, the surgeons declared that it was impossible that the knight should support his armor, or wield a sword, within two months; and thus, perforce, Guendolen had her way; and it was decided that Aradas should be admitted to the perilous distinction of maintaining the charge, in the wager of battle.