98 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
about it.” And the worthy old knight laughed so 
heartily, as he pictured his followers splashing 
about in the moat, that his visor slipped down, and 
he was compelled to call on his esquire to unbuckle 
the fastenings of his helmet. 
Pass we over the long ride of the young lovers, 
followed by their attendants, through the wild 
avenues of the forest, the couch which the Knight 
made among the broad-leaved Fern when the Daisy 
of the Dale was weary, and the blue Harebells that 
nodded about her beautiful head while she slept. 
Love was their guide, and lighted their way through 
the darksome forest-paths ; guiding them over many 
a wild wold and lonely moor, and beside many a 
reedy mere, until he brought them beneath the 
walls of the city where her father was encamped. 
Wroth was that old knight when he heard that his 
castle was besieged, and he vowed, by the blood of 
the blessed Martyr of Canterbury, that from dungeon- 
floor to turret-steep, he would not leave one stone 
above the other when he reached the stronghold of 
his enemy. But when the wars of the Boses were 
over, the king wrote a “ broad letter,” with his own 
hand, to which he affixed his royal seal, and de¬ 
spatched it by a messenger; and instead of foes, the 
two old knights became friends, even as they were 
in the days of their youth. And the sounds which 
startled Love in the forest were the monarch and his 
