Then the Countess belted on him the sword of price which went therewith, a blade of matchless Toledan steel, but covered with a plain scabbard of black pigskin.
"Draw and thrust," commanded the lady, pointing at the rough stone of the wall at the end of the passage.
Sholto looked ruefully at the glittering blade which he held in his hand, flashing blue from point to double guard.
"Thrust and fear not," said the Countess of Douglas the second time.
Sholto lunged out at the stone with all his might. Fire flew from the smitten blue whinstone where the point, with all the weight of his young body behind it, impinged on the wall. A tingling shock of acutest agony ran up the striker's wrist to the shoulder blade. The sword dropped ringing on the pavement, and Sholto's arm fell numb and useless to his side.
"Lift the sword and look," commanded the Lady Douglas.
Sholto did as he was bidden, with his left hand, and lo, the point which had bent like a hoop was sharp and straight as if just from the armourer's. "Can you strike with your left hand?" asked the lady.
"As with my right," answered the son of Malise the Brawny.
There was a bar at a window in the wall bending outward in shape like the letter U.
"Then strike a cutting stroke with your left hand."
Sholto took the sword. It seemed to him short-sighted policy that in the hour of his departure on a perilous quest he should disable himself in both arms. But Sholto MacKim was not the youth to question an order. He lifted the sword in his left hand, and with a strong ungraceful motion struck with all his might.
At first he thought that he had missed altogether. There was no tingling in his arm, no jar when the blade should have encountered the iron. But the Countess was examining the centre of the hoop.
"Come hither and look," she said, without turning round.
And when he looked, lo, the thick iron had been cut through almost without bending. The sides of the break were fresh, bright, and true.
"Now look at the edge of your sword," she said.
There was no slightest dint anywhere upon it, so that Sholto, armourer's son as he was, turned about the blade to see if by any chance he could have smitten with the reverse.
Failing in this, he could only kneel to his lady and say, "This is a great gift--I am not worthy."