Your challenge would soon be answered

Replied the Palmer, “were your antagonist near you. As the matter is, disturb not the peaceful hall with vaunts of the issue of the conflict, which you well know cannot take place. If Ivanhoe ever returns from Palestine, I will be his surety that he meets you.”

A goodly security!

Said the Knight Templar; “and what do you proffer as a pledge?”

“This reliquary,” said the Palmer, taking a small ivory box from his bosom, and crossing himself, “containing a portion of the true cross, brought from the Monastery of Mount Carmel.”

The Prior

Of Jorvaulx crossed himself and repeated a pater noster, in which all devoutly joined, excepting the Jew, the Mahomedans, and the Templar; the latter of whom, without vailing his bonnet, or testifying any reverence for the alleged sanctity of the relic, took from his neck a gold chain, which he flung on the board, saying—

Let Prior Aymer

hold my pledge and that of this nameless vagrant, in token that when the Knight of Ivanhoe comes within the four seas of Britain, he underlies the challenge of Brian de Bois-Guilbert.