With whom have you been practising, since you came here ?" "Principally with Godfrey Harpent, Dick Bamborough, and William Anell; but I have had a turn with a great many of the other men-at-arms." "The three men you name are all stout fellows, and good swordsmen.

As a borderer, I suppose that you have practised with the lance ?" "We call it by no such knightly term.

With us it is a spear, and nought else; but all borderers carry it, both for fighting and for pricking up cattle; and from the time that I could sit a horse I have always practised for a while, every day, with some of my father's troopers, or with himself, using blunt weapons whitened with chalk, so as to show where the hits fell.

Although in a charge upon footmen, our border spearmen would couch their weapons and ride straight at their foe; in skirmishes, where each can single out an enemy, and there is a series of single combats, they do not so fight, but circle round each other, trusting to the agility of their horses to avoid a thrust, and to deliver one when there is an opening.

Our spears are nothing like so heavy as the knightly lances, and we thrust with them as with the point of a sword." "But in that way you can hardly penetrate armour," one of the other esquires said.
"No, it is only in a downright charge that we try to do so.