[Winterfell]

Check the cellspacing and cellpadding attributes of the table. That's most likely what's causing your spacing issues. A sample bit of code might look something like this:

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
<tr>
<td><img src="path-to-image/left-round-image.gif" alt="" border="0" height="20" width="20" /></td>
<td width="100%" style="background: url(path-to-image/middle-image.gif) repeat-x top;">Text can go here.</td>
<td><img src="path-to-image/right-round-image.gif" alt="" border="0" height="20" width="20" /></td>
</tr>
</table>

Of course, you'd need to adjust height, width, padding, etc. to suit your needs.