On the cold and rainy evening of Thursday, the 26th of October, in the
year previously indicated, such travellers as might have chanced to
be abroad in that bitter night, might have remarked a fellow-wayfarer
journeying on the road from Oberwinter to Godesberg. He was a man not
tall in stature, but of the most athletic proportions, and Time, which
had browned and furrowed his cheek and sprinkled his locks with gray,
declared pretty clearly that He must have been acquainted with the
warrior for some fifty good years. He was armed in mail, and rode a
powerful and active battle-horse, which (though the way the pair had
come that day was long and weary indeed,) yet supported the warrior, his
armor and luggage, with seeming ease. As it was in a friend's country,
the knight did not think fit to wear his heavy destrier, or helmet,
which hung at his saddlebow over his portmanteau. Both were marked with
the coronet of a count; and from the crown which surmounted the helmet,
rose the crest of his knightly race, an arm proper lifting a naked
sword.
At his right hand, and convenient to the warrior's grasp, hung his
mangonel or mace--a terrific weapon which had shattered the brains of
many a turbaned soldan; while over his broad and ample chest there
fell the triangular shield of the period, whereon were emblazoned his
arms--argent, a gules wavy, on a saltire reversed of the second: the
latter device was awarded for a daring exploit before Ascalon, by the
Emperor Maximilian, and a reference to the German Peerage of that day,
or a knowledge of high families which every gentleman then possessed,
would have sufficed to show at once that the rider we have described was
of the noble house of Hombourg.
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