.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 46176
   :PG.Title: The Knights of the Round Table
   :PG.Released: 2014-07-02
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: William Henry Frost
   :MARCREL.ill: Sydney Richmond Burleigh
   :DC.Title: The Knights of the Round Table
              Stories of King Arthur and the Holy Grail
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1897
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
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   .. _`"PERCIVALE SAW A SHIP COMING TOWARD THE LAND."`:

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      "PERCIVALE SAW A SHIP COMING TOWARD THE LAND."

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      THE KNIGHTS OF
      THE ROUND TABLE

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      *STORIES OF KING ARTHUR
      AND THE HOLY GRAIL*

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      BY

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      WILLIAM HENRY FROST

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      ILLUSTRATED BY SYDNEY RICHMOND BURLEIGH

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      NEW YORK
      CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
      1897

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      COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
      CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

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      TROW DIRECTORY
      PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
      NEW YORK

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      BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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      Each 1 vol., 12mo, Illustrated by SIDNEY
      R. BURLEIGH. Price, $1.50

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      THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
      THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR
      THE WAGNER STORY BOOK

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      To
      MY FATHER
      John Dudley Frost

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER I

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   `On Glastonbury Tor`_


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   CHAPTER II

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   `How We Discovered Camelot`_


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   CHAPTER III

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   `The Boy from the Forest`_


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   CHAPTER IV

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   `The Queen's Robing-Room`_


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   CHAPTER V

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   `"Camelot, that is in English Winchester"`_


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   CHAPTER VI

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   `The Boat on the River`_


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   CHAPTER VII

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   `The Giants' Dance`_


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   CHAPTER VIII

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   `On the Edge of Lyonnesse`_


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   CHAPTER IX

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   `The Siege Perilous`_


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   CHAPTER X

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   `Gawain`_


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   CHAPTER XI

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   `Lancelot`_


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   CHAPTER XII

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   `Bors`_


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   CHAPTER XIII

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   `Percivale`_


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   CHAPTER XIV

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   `Galahad`_


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   CHAPTER XV

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   `The City of Sarras`_


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   CHAPTER XVI

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   `Stories of Strange Stones`_


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   CHAPTER XVII

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   `"And on the Mere the Wailing Died Away"`_


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   CHAPTER XVIII

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   `The Abbess and the Monk`_


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   CHAPTER XIX

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   `"Rexque Futurus"`_

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   LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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`"Percivale saw a ship coming toward the land."`_ . . . *Frontispiece*

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`Glastonbury Tor`_

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`"As he played a storm began to rise"`_

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`The abbot's kitchen`_

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`"The city and the fortress of the rabbits"`_

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`"Kay's horse galloped back alone"`_ (missing from book)

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`The Tower of London`_

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`The Round Table at Winchester`_

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`Winchester Cathedral`_

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`Stonehenge`_

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`St. Michael's Mount`_

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`The Land's End`_

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`"The bright spot on the road grew smaller and smaller"`_ (missing from book)

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`"A pasture where a hundred and fifty bulls were feeding"`_

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`"Through woods where there were scarcely any paths to follow"`_

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`"He saw the water before him and a ship"`_

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`"'Knight,' she said, 'what are you doing here?'"`_

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`"'It was King Evelake's shield'"`_

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`"'I cut off my hair and wove it into a girdle'"`_

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`The Dove with the golden censer`_

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`The Cheesewring`_

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`St. Joseph's Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey`_

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`"The two great waves broke upon each other"`_

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`The Choir, Glastonbury Abbey`_

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`"On toward the gold and the purple in the west"`_

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   SOME OLDER STORY-TELLERS

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There is really no need, perhaps, for me to
tell you that all these stories have been told
before.  But, though you know it already, I like
to say it again, because I can never say often
enough how grateful I am to those who told the
world first of Arthur, of Guinevere, of
Lancelot, and of Gawain; of Galahad, of Percivale,
and of Percivale's sister; of the Siege Perilous
and of the Holy Grail.  If you do not now
count Sir Thomas Malory a dear friend, as I do,
learn to do it, and you will be the better for it.
I do not know who made those wonderful tales
the Mabinogion, but I know who gave them
to us in our own language—Lady Charlotte
Guest.  I wish that I knew whom to thank for
"The Romance of Merlin" and for the story of
"Gawain and the Green Knight." And there
were many other noble story-tellers of the old
time who passed away and left us no knowledge
of themselves and not even their names to call
them by.  But they left us their stories, and if
anything from us can reach them where they
are, surely gratitude can, and that they must
have from every one of us who loves a story.
And the great poet of our own days, Lord
Tennyson, must have it too, for teaching us
how to read their stories.

Some time you may read these tales and
others as they wrote them, and you cannot read
them without thinking what a great and
marvellous thing it was that they, who lived no
longer than other men, could give delight to
the people of so many centuries.  But some of
these stories are not easy to find, and some are
not easy to read, when you have found them.
I have tried to tell a few of them again in my
own way, hoping that thus some might have
the stories and know them, for whom the older
books might be hard to get or hard to understand.




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.. _`ON GLASTONBURY TOR`:

.. _`Glastonbury Tor`:

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   :alt: Glastonbury Tor

   Glastonbury Tor

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   THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE

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   CHAPTER I

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   ON GLASTONBURY TOR

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It was when we were making a journey in
the South of England one summer that we
found ourselves in the midst of the old tales of
King Arthur and of the Holy Grail.  "We"
means Helen, Helen's mother, and me.  We
wandered about the country, here and there
and wherever our fancy led us, and everywhere
the stories of King Arthur fell in our
way.  In this place he was born, in that place
he was crowned; here he fought a battle, there
he held a tournament.  Everything could
remind us, when we knew how to be reminded,
of the stories of the King and the Queen and
the knights of the Round Table.

It was I who told the stories and it was
Helen who listened to them.  Sometimes
Helen's mother listened to them too, and
sometimes she had other things to do that she cared
about more.

One day we had been riding for many hours
on the crooked railways of the Southwest,
where you change cars so often that after a
little while you cannot remember at all how many
trains you have taken.  And late in the
afternoon, or perhaps early in the evening, we saw
from the window of the carriage a big hill,
lifting itself high up against the sky, with a lonely
tower on the top of it.  And that was Glastonbury Tor.

There was no time to try to see anything of
Glastonbury that night after dinner, and we
were too tired.  But that big hill looked so
inviting that we decided that we would see it the
next day and climb up to the top of it, before
we did anything else.  I was a little
disappointed with Glastonbury, as we walked
through the streets on our way to the Tor.
The place looked much too prosperous to
please me, and not at all too neat.

I cheered up a little when we came to the
Abbot's Kitchen.  It stands in the middle of a
big field, with a fence around it, and we had to
borrow a key from a woman who kept it to lend
so that we could go in and see it.  We even
spared a little time from the Tor to see it in.
The Abbot's Kitchen belonged to the old
abbey of Glastonbury.  It is a small, square
building, with a fireplace in each corner.  It is still
in such good repair that it is hardly fair to call
it a ruin, but it is a part of old Glastonbury,
and we carried back the key feeling glad that
we had borrowed it.

It was a good, stiff climb up the side of the
Tor, and we stopped more than once to look
back at the town behind us and below us.  It
looked prettier from here.  Down there in the
streets there was the noise of a busy modern
town.  The ways were muddy and there were
rather frowsy women and children about some
of the doors.  But up here we were out of sight
and hearing of all that.  From here the town
looked quiet and peaceful and beautiful—just
its roofs and chimneys and towers showing
through the wide, green masses of the trees,
and the sound of a church chime, that rang
every quarter of an hour, came to us softened
and mellow.

"Down there," I said, "we saw nothing but
Glastonbury—to-day's Glastonbury—but here
we can see Avalon.  That is Avalon down there
below us, the Island of Apples, the happy
country, the place where there was no sorrow,
the place where fairies lived, the place where
Joseph brought the Holy Grail and where he
built his church.  A wonderful old place it was,
and it was a wonderful abbey that grew up
where Joseph first made his little chapel.  Our
old friend St. Dunstan, who pinched the devil's
nose, was the abbot there once.  So was
St. Patrick.  When he came to Glastonbury he
climbed up to the top of this hill where we are
now and found, where this old tower is, the
ruins of a church of St. Michael.  They used to
have a way of building churches to St. Michael
on the tops of high hills.  St. Patrick rebuilt
this one and afterwards it was thrown down
by an earthquake.  I don't know whether
St. Patrick built this tower that is here now
or not.

"Did I say that fairies used to live here?
Another abbot of Glastonbury found that out.
He was St. Collen, and he must have lived
when there was no church of St. Michael here
on the top of the Tor.  St. Collen was one of
those men who think that they cannot serve
God and live in comfort at the same time.
When he had been abbot of Glastonbury for a
time he thought that he was leading too easy a
life, so he gave up his post and went about
preaching.  But even that did not please him,
so he came back here and made a cell in the
rock on the side of Glastonbury Tor, and lived
in it as a hermit.

"One day he heard two men outside his cell
talking about Gwyn, the son of Nudd.  And
one of them said: 'Gwyn, the son of Nudd, is
the King of the Fairies.'

"Then Collen put his head out of the door
of his cell and said to the two men: 'Do not
talk of such wicked things.  There are no fairies,
or if there are they are devils.  And there
is no Gwyn, the son of Nudd.  Hold your
tongues about him.'

"'Hold your own tongue about him,' one of
the men answered, 'or you will hear from him
in some unpleasant way.'

"The men went away, and by and by Collen
heard a knock at his door, and a voice asked if
he were in his cell.  'I am here,' he answered;
'who is it that asks?'

"'I am a messenger from Gwyn, the son of
Nudd, the King of the Fairies,' the voice said,
'and he has sent me to command you to come
and speak with him on the top of the hill at
noon.'

"Collen did not think that he ought to mind
what the King of the Fairies said to him, if
there really were any King of the Fairies, so
he stayed in his cell all day.  The next day the
messenger came again and said just what he
had said before, and again St. Collen stayed in
his cell all day.  But the third day the messenger
came again and said to Collen that he must
come and speak with Gwyn, the son of Nudd,
the King of the Fairies, on the top of the hill,
at noon, or it would be the worse for him.

"Then Collen took a flask and filled it with
holy water and fastened it at his waist, and at
noon he went up the hill.  For a long time
Collen had been abbot of Glastonbury and for a
long time he had been a hermit and lived in his
cell on the side of this very hill, but never
before had he seen the great castle that stood that
day on the top of Glastonbury Tor.  It did not
look heavy, as if it were built for war, but it
was wonderfully high and graceful and beautiful.
It had tall towers, with banners of every
color hung from the tops of them and lower
down, and there were battlements where ladies
and squires in rich dresses stood and looked
down at other ladies and squires below.  And
those below were dancing and jousting and
playing games, and all around there were
soldiers, handsomely dressed too, guarding the place.

"When Collen came near, a dozen of the
people met him and said to him: 'You must
come with us to our King, Gwyn, the son of
Nudd—he is waiting for you.'

"And they led him into the castle and into
the great hall.  In the middle of the hall was a
table, spread with more delicious things to eat
than poor St. Collen, who thought that it was
wicked to eat good things, had ever dreamed
of.  And at the head of the table, on a gold
chair, sat a man who wore a crown.  'Collen,'
he said, 'I am the King of the Fairies, Gwyn,
the son of Nudd.  Do you believe in me now?
Sit down and eat with me, and let us talk
together.  You are a learned man, but you did
not believe in me.  Perhaps I can tell you of
other things that so wise a man as you ought
to know.'

"But St. Collen only took the flask of holy
water from his side and threw some of it upon
Gwyn, the son of Nudd, and sprinkled some of
it around, and in an instant there was no king
there and there was no table.  The hall was
gone, and the castle.  The dances and the games
were done, and the squires and the ladies and
the soldiers all had vanished.  The whole of the
fairy palace was gone, and Collen was left
standing alone on the top of Glastonbury Tor.

"But Glastonbury has forgotten St. Collen,
I suppose.  The old town is prouder now of
Joseph of Arimathæa than of anybody
else—prouder than it is of King Arthur, I think,
though King Arthur—but I won't tell you
about that now.  You know how Joseph of
Arimathæa buried the Christ in his tomb after
He was taken down from the cross.  After He
had risen again the Jews put Joseph in prison,
because they said that he had stolen the body.
But Joseph had with him the Holy Grail, the
cup in which he had caught the blood of the
Saviour, when He was on the cross.  It was the
same cup, too, from which the Saviour had
drunk at the Last Supper.  It was a wonderful
thing, that cup, and there are whole volumes of
stories about it.  The blood that Joseph had
caught in it always stayed in it afterwards,
and the cup and the blood seemed to have a
strange sort of life and knowledge and the
power of choosing.  One of the wonderful
things about the Holy Grail was that it could
always give food to any one whom it chose,
and those who were fed by the Holy Grail
wanted no other food than what it gave them.
And so Joseph wanted nothing while he was in
prison.

"At last the Emperor had Joseph let out of
his prison.  And some one asked him how long
it had been since he was put there, and he
answered: 'I have been here in this prison for
nearly three days.'

"Then they all stared at one another and
whispered and looked at Joseph, and then they
whispered together again.  'Why do you look
at one another and at me so,' said Joseph, 'is it
not three days, almost, since they put me here?'

"'It is wonderful,' said one of them; 'Joseph,
you have been in this prison for forty-two years.'

"'Can it be?' said Joseph; 'it seems to me
like only three days, and barely that, and I have
never been so happy in my life as I have been
for these three days—or these—can it
be—forty-two years?'

"And this was because he had had the Holy
Grail in the prison with him.  Afterwards he
came to England.  He brought the Holy Grail
here to Avalon, and the King of that time gave
him some ground to build his church on.  They
say it was really the island of Avalon then, for it
was all surrounded by marsh and water, and
there was an opening, a waterway, out to the
Bristol Channel.  And since it ceased to be an
island the sea has twice at least broken through
and made it one again for a little while.  But
the last time was almost two hundred years ago.

"Well, when Joseph and those who were
with him first came here, they rested on the
hillside and Joseph stuck the staff that he
carried into the ground.  It was not this hill where
we are, but another, Wearyall Hill.  And
Joseph's staff, where he had set it in the ground,
began to bud, and then leaves and branches
grew on it.  It struck roots into the ground and
became a tree.  It was a thorn-tree, the Holy
Thorn they called it, and always after that it
blossomed twice a year, once in the time of
other thorn-trees and again at Christmas.  The
tree was gone, of course, long ago, but other
trees had grown from slips of it, and they say
that descendants of it are still growing in
Glastonbury gardens and that they still bloom at
Christmas.  I am sorry that we cannot stay
here till Christmas to see if it is true.

"So, in the place that the King gave him,
Joseph built his chapel of wood and woven twigs,
and it was the first Christian church in
England.  Some of the stories say that the Holy
Grail, that Joseph brought here with him, was
buried at last under one of these Glastonbury
hills, but that is not the story that I like the
best.  One story says that it was not a cup at
all that Joseph brought to Avalon, but two
cruets.  It says besides that these two cruets were
buried with Joseph when he died, and that when
his grave is found, and the two cruets in it,
there will never again be any drought in
England.  But according to the story that I like
best, Joseph did not die at all, as other men
die, but was long kept alive by the Holy Grail,
waiting for the best knight of the world, for it
was foretold that he should never die till the
best knight of the world should come.

"Since it was here that the Grail was
brought, I think it must have been not far from
here that King Pelles lived, before Balin gave
him the wound that was never to heal till the
best of all knights should come.  And I fancy
it was somewhere near here, too, that he lived
after that.  He was the keeper of the Grail, and
he had a castle called Carbonek.  When we talk
of the Grail it seems to me that everything
becomes mysterious and uncertain, so that it is
hard to tell where this Castle of Carbonek was.
At one time it seems to have been on the
seashore and at another time it seems to have been
inland.  But for that very reason I think that
Avalon is as likely a place for it as any, for this
place was inland, just as it is now, but then the
waters of the sea came in around it.  Yet the
land around King Pelles's old castle was all laid
waste, and I have never heard that the land
around Avalon was so.  But you see that it is
all uncertain and strange, and we cannot be sure
of anything about it.

"I think I have told you the story about
King Pelles and Balin before, but I will tell you
a little of it again, because it fits in so well
just here.  King Pelles was descended from
Joseph of Arimathæa, and, as I said, he was the
keeper of the Holy Grail.  Once Balin came to
his castle, seeking for Garlon, a knight who had
the power of riding invisible and who killed
other knights, when they could not see him.
Balin found him there and killed him, and King
Pelles tried to avenge his death, because he was
his brother.

"Balin had broken his sword and he fled
from King Pelles and ran through the castle till
he came to a chamber where Joseph of Arimathæa,
who was kept alive by the power of the
Holy Grail, was lying in a bed.  And beside him
was a spear, with drops of blood flowing from
the point.  It was the spear with which the
Roman soldier wounded the side of the Christ
when He was on the cross.  Balin seized it and
turned upon King Pelles and wounded him with
it in the side.

"Then the whole castle fell down around
them and all the country about it became waste
and dry and desolate.  Balin lay under the ruins
for three days, and then Merlin, the great
magician of King Arthur's court, came and woke
him and gave him a horse and a sword and sent
him on his way.  Afterwards Balin met his
brother Balan, and they fought, neither of them
knowing who the other was, till they killed
each other.  Then Merlin took the sword with
which Balin had killed his brother and drove
it into a great stone, up to the hilt, and set the
stone floating on the river.  And he wrote on
the stone that no knight should ever draw this
sword out of the stone except the one to whom
it should belong, the best knight of the world.

"I cannot tell you how King Pelles got out
of the ruins of his castle, but afterwards he had
another castle, the one that was called Carbonek.
He was still the keeper of the Grail.  And it
was foretold that the wound in the side that
Balin had given to him with the spear would
never be healed till the best knight of all the
world should come.  So for many years King
Pelles lived in his castle and bore the pain of a
wound that always seemed new and fresh, and
waited for the coming of the best knight of the
world.

"This is getting to be a rather rambling sort
of story, and while we are rambling perhaps I
may as well tell you about the adventure that Sir
Bors had at the Castle of Carbonek.  Bors was
a knight of the Round Table.  He was one of
the best of all of them.  He sat at the table in
the next seat but one to the Siege Perilous.
The Siege Perilous was the seat on the right of
the King's.  Merlin had made it when he made
the Round Table, and he said that no one should
ever sit in it without coming to harm, except the
best knight of all the world.  So for many years
no one had sat in that seat.  And no one sat
in the one next to it either, but Bors sat in
the one next to that.  Next to him sat his cousin
Lancelot.  They were the sons of two kings who
were brothers, Ban and Bors, who had helped
King Arthur, when he first came to his throne.

"Lancelot was counted as the best of all King
Arthur's knights.  He was the strongest and
the bravest of them all, people said, and the best
fighter, and the King and the Queen loved him
more than any of the others.  Nobody could see
why he should not sit in the Siege Perilous, but
whenever a knight came to the Round Table
his name appeared of itself, in gold letters, in
the seat that he was to have; and nobody could
sit in the Siege Perilous till his name came in it.

"But I set out to tell you about Sir Bors.
Once Bors came to the Castle of Carbonek.  A
wandering knight, in those days, was always
welcome in every castle, and so King Pelles
welcomed Bors.  The King was brought into the
hall and Bors was placed at the table between
him and his daughter.  And there in the hall,
too, Bors saw a beautiful child, a boy, with deep
eyes and a bright, sweet face and golden hair.
He was the son of King Pelles's daughter, and
I will tell you more about him another time.

"It was a strange way of entertaining guests
that they had here, Bors thought, for, though
they were sitting at the table, there was nothing
to eat on it.  Just as Bors noticed this he saw a
white dove fly into the room.  It carried a little
golden censer, by a chain which it held in its
beak.  The thin smoke from the censer spread
through the hall and filled it with a strange,
sweet odor.  And while the dove flew about the
hall a girl came in, carrying something covered
with white silk, which she held high up in her
hands.  Bors could not see what it was that she
carried, but all who were in the hall knelt down
and looked up toward it, and Bors did the same.
But though the covering of silk hid the thing
itself which was under it, there was something
about it that it could not hide.  For the white
silk was all glowing with a rosy light that came
from within it, and it shone through it and shed
a rosy brightness all through the hall.  The dove
flew out of the room again and the girl went
away too.  And this was the Holy Grail that
had passed, and Bors had not seen it.

"But when it was gone and Bors looked at
the table again it was covered with food, finer
and more delicious than Bors had ever tasted or
seen before.  'There are strange things to see
in your castle, King Pelles,' said Bors.

"'There are stranger things than you have
seen yet,' King Pelles answered.  'It is a place
of wonders and of danger for knights, and few of
them leave here without coming to harm.  Only
for the best of them is it safe to stay all night in
my castle.  You, Sir Knight, may stay if you
will, but it will be better for you to go, and
so I warn you.'

"'It is not for me to say,' Bors answered,
'that I am better than other knights, and indeed
I know some who are better than I.  But I am
not afraid to be in your castle for a night, and
here I will stay.'

"'Do as you please,' said the King, 'but I
have warned you.'

"So, when it was time to go to bed, Bors was
led to a chamber and left alone in it.  Nothing
that the King had said had made him afraid, but
he thought that it would be better not to take
off his armor.  And as soon as he had lain down
in his armor a great beam of light shone upon
him.  He could not tell where it came from, but
suddenly, along in the beam of light, came a
spear, with no hand to hold it, and a little stream
of blood flowed from the point of the spear.
And before Bors could move the spear came
upon him and went through his armor as if it
had been a cobweb and made a deep wound in
his side.  The spear was drawn away again, but
with the pain Bors fell back upon his pillow
and did not see where it went.

"Then there came a knight, all armed, with
his sword drawn, and the knight said: 'Sir
Bors, arise and fight with me.'

"Bors was almost fainting, because of the
wound in his side, but he arose and tried to fight.
And when he tried he found that he could fight
better than he thought.  He fought the other
knight till he gave ground before him, little by
little, and at last Bors forced him out of the
chamber.  Then Bors lay down again to rest,
and all at once the room was full of falling
arrows.  He could not see where they came from,
any more than he could see where anything else
came from, but they fell all around him and
upon him.  They pierced his armor, just as the
spear had done, as if there had been no armor,
and they wounded him in many places.  And
these wounds and the wound that the spear had
made burned and smarted more than before,
and Bors felt weaker and fainter.

"Then a lion came into the chamber and
sprang upon Bors and tore off his shield.  But
again Bors found that he could fight if he tried,
and he struck the lion's head with his sword
and killed it.

"And next there came an old man, who had
a harp.  He sat down and began to play on the
harp and to sing, and as he played a storm
began to rise outside the castle.  At first it was
only a rising of the wind that Bors heard, but it
grew and grew, till it swept through the halls
and the corridors of the castle and through the
room where Bors lay.  It caught at the
curtains and the tapestries of the chamber and
almost tore them from their places, and it shook
the arms that hung on the walls, till they rattled
together with a dull, ghostly clatter.  Bors
could hear the wind, too, rushing and roaring
and screaming up over the towers.  And then
the rain came, and the thunder, with noises of
splitting and crashing as if the hills around were
breaking and rolling down into the valleys, and
the very walls shuddered and trembled, and the
lightning was so fierce that it seemed to shine
through the walls, as if they had been made of
glass.

.. _`"AS HE PLAYED A STORM BEGAN TO RISE"`:

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   "AS HE PLAYED A STORM BEGAN TO RISE."

"But all through the dreadful noise of the
storm Bors could hear the soft voice of the old
man who sang, as if there had been no other
sound.  He sang a song of how Joseph of
Arimathæa had come to England and had brought
the Holy Grail.  When he had finished it he
spoke to Bors, and, as he talked and as Bors
answered him, the storm grew louder and more
terrible.  'Bors,' said the old man, 'leave this
place.  You have done nobly here.  There are
few knights in the world who could bear all that
you have borne to-night.  Tell your cousin
Lancelot all that you have seen, and tell him
that it is he who should be here and should see
these things and more, but that he is not so
good a knight as to be allowed to see what you
have seen.  These things are only for the best
of knights.'

"'It is well for you,' said Bors, 'that you are
old.  I am weary with fighting and I am faint
and dizzy with many wounds, but in spite of
all, if you were not old and weak, I would not
hear you say such things of my cousin Sir
Lancelot.  Sir Lancelot is the best knight that
lives, and what any good knight can do or see
Lancelot can do or see.'

"'Bors, Bors,' said the old man again, 'do
not think that you can frighten me with loud
talk.  In the strength of his arm and the
sureness of his spear and the power of his sword,
Lancelot is the best knight that lives, but, for
all that, he is not so good a knight as you, Sir
Bors.  Bors, what did you, and what did
Lancelot swear when King Arthur made you knights
of his Round Table?'

"'We swore,' said Bors, 'that we would help
the King to guard his people, that we would
do right and justice, that in all things we would
be true and loyal to God and to the King.'

"'Yes, Bors,' said the old man, 'that was
what you swore, and have you kept your oath,
both by your deeds and in your heart?'

"'As far as God has given me power,' Bors
answered, 'I have kept it.'

"'Yes,' said the old man, 'you have kept it
well.  But how has Lancelot kept it?'

"'Old man,' said Bors, 'do you dare to say
to me, Lancelot's cousin and his friend, that
he has not kept his oath?'

"'Bors, Bors,' said the old man again, 'do
not try to frighten me.  I dare to tell you
anything that it is good for you to know.  In all
his deeds Lancelot has kept his oath, but how
has he kept it in his heart?  Go and ask him.
Ask him if in his heart he has always been true
and loyal to the King.  Ask him if he has
never grown proud of his strength.  Ask him if
he has not sometimes done his deeds for the
Queen's praise, and not for the King's love and
the King's glory.  Ask him if he has never
wished that he himself were such a king, with
such a queen.  Ask him if that wish was all true
and loyal to the King.  Bors, Bors, out there in
the world, where you and Lancelot live, the
strongest knight is the best, and Lancelot is
the best knight—out there in the world.  But
this is the castle of the Holy Grail, and the
Holy Grail searches the hearts of men.  Here,
in this chamber, Sir Bors, Lancelot could not
stay as you have stayed and see what you have
seen and bear what you have borne.'

"As the old man ceased to speak it seemed
to Bors that the burning of his wounds grew
less.  While he was thinking of this and of what
the old man had said, the old man was gone, he
could not tell where.  Then, he could not tell
from where, the white dove flew into the room.
It was the same dove that he had seen in the
hall, and it held the same little gold censer in
its beak, and again there was the sweet odor
through the room.  And when the dove came
the storm was ended.  There was no more
blinding lightning and the thunder sounded
only a little and far off.  The rain ceased and
all the wind died down.

"Then Bors saw four children pass through
the room, carrying four lighted tapers.  With
the four children was a figure like an old man.
It wore a long, white robe, and a hood hung
low down over the face, so that all that Bors
could see of it was the end of a white beard.
In the right hand was that spear, with the little
stream of blood flowing from the point.  There
was no one to tell Bors who this was, but
somehow he seemed to know that it was Joseph of
Arimathæa.

"They passed through the room, but still
Bors could see them in the next chamber.  The
children knelt around the old man and he held
high up in his hands that wonderful thing with
the covering of white silk.  Again the soft,
rosy brightness glowed through the silk, and
Bors did not know why it was that when he
saw it he felt so peaceful and glad.  Then he
heard a loud voice that said: 'Sir Bors, leave
this place; it is not yet time for you to be
here.'

"Then all at once the door was shut and
Bors could not see the children or the old man
or what he carried.  The strange, bright light
that had shone upon him all this time was gone.
Outside the storm and the clouds were past,
and a clear ray of moonlight shone through the
chamber.  All the pain of his wounds was gone
and he sank back upon his pillow and slept.

"When he awoke in the morning it seemed
to him that he had never felt so strong and
fresh.  The wounds that he had had from the
spear and the arrows had left no scar.  And
when King Pelles saw him he said: 'Sir Bors,
you have done here what few living knights
could do, and I know that you will prove one
of the best knights of the world.'

"Then Bors remembered that the voice had
told him that it was not time yet for him to be
in this place, so he took his horse and rode
away toward Camelot, to find Lancelot and to
tell him what he had seen."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOW WE DISCOVERED CAMELOT`:

.. _`The Abbot's Kitchen`:

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   :alt: The Abbot's Kitchen

   The Abbot's Kitchen

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   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW WE DISCOVERED CAMELOT

.. vspace:: 2

One of the strangest things about this kind of
travel is to find how much more you know about
the country than the people do who live in it.
Before we came to England at all I had read in
certain books that the real Camelot was in the
county of Somerset.  It was at Camelot that
King Arthur lived more than anywhere else
and where he had his finest castle.  So of
course we were anxious to see Camelot.  Our
trouble did not seem to be that we could not
find it; it was that we found it in too many
places.  We had been to Camelford, a poor
little village in Cornwall, earlier in our journey,
and they had told us that that was Camelot.  We
did not really believe it, but neither did I feel
quite sure that my books were right about the
place in Somerset.  We thought that it would
be best to see all the Camelots, so that we could
make up our minds which one we ought to
believe in, or whether we ought to believe in any
of them at all.

I had studied the books and I had studied the
maps, till I almost felt that I could go straight
to this Camelot, without any help.  It was still
called Camelot, it seemed, and it was a fortified
hill, near a place called Queen Camel, some
dozen miles to the south of Glastonbury.

It was lucky that I knew all this, because
when we asked the people of the hotel in
Glastonbury if they could give us a carriage and a
driver to take us to Camelot they said that they
had never heard of any such place.  They had
heard of Queen Camel.  They did not know
just where even that was, but they thought
that it might be found.  I felt so sure that the
books and the maps and I were right about it
that I told them that we would take the
carriage and go to Queen Camel, and then we
would see if we could find Camelot.  No doubt
they thought that we were insane, but that
made no difference to us, and as long as we
paid for the carriage it made no difference to
them.

Helen's mother is one of those dreadfully
sensible people who always want you to take
umbrellas and things with you.  She was not
going with us to discover Camelot, but she said
that we must take umbrellas and mackintoshes
with us, because it was going to rain.  It is
always hard to argue with these people, because
they are so often right.  This time we really
had no excuse for not taking them, for they
would simply be put in the bottom of the
carriage and they would be no trouble.  So we
took them, and we were scarcely outside
Glastonbury before we found that this was one of
the times when Helen's mother was right.  For
then it began to rain.  The driver had taken
the way that he thought was toward Queen
Camel, and we were riding across a great
stretch of low, level land.  The wind swept
across it, and the rain came at us in sheets.
We didn't mind it much, with our mackintoshes
on, but I did think that it was fair to ask
Helen what she thought of the poet who said
that this Avalon was a place "Where falls not
hail, or rain, or any snow."

"Maybe it is," she answered, pulling her
water-proof hood down so that scarcely a bit of
her could be seen, except the tip of her nose;
"this rain doesn't fall; it just comes against us
sideways."  So the poet's reputation was saved.

It could not rain so hard as this very long,
and by and by it stopped altogether.  Then it
began again, and there were showers all day.
Sometimes it looked as if it were going to stop
for good, but we could scarcely get our
waterproofs off before it began all over.

"Isn't it curious," I said, "that a storm
coming up just here should remind me of a story?
It is about a time when Gawain had to go out
in bad weather.  This is the right time to tell
the story, too, while we are looking for this
particular Camelot.  For the story begins at
Camelot, and the learned man who first dug it
out of its old manuscript and printed it says
that Camelot was in Somerset.

"King Arthur was keeping Christmas at
Camelot with his knights.  The feast lasted for
many days.  On New Year's Day, as they all
sat in the hall, the King and the Queen and the
knights, there rode in the most wonderful-looking
man whom they had ever seen.  He was
dressed all in green, and the big horse that he
rode was green.  And that was not all, for the
hair that hung down upon his shoulders was
like long, waving grass, and the beard that
spread over his breast was like a green bush.
He wore no helmet and he carried no shield or
spear.  In one hand he held a branch of holly
and in the other a battle-axe.  It was sharp and
polished so that it shone like silver.  'Who is
the chief here?' he cried.

"'I am the chief,' Arthur answered; 'sit
down with us and help us keep our feast.'

"'I have not come to eat and drink,' said the
man in green.  'I have come to see if it is true
that you have brave knights in your court,
King Arthur.'

"'Then sit and eat with us first,' Arthur
answered, 'and afterwards you shall have as many
good knights to joust with you as you can wish,
and you shall see whether they are brave.'

"'It is not for jousting that I have come,
either,' said the man in green.  'Do you see
this axe of mine?  I will lend it to any knight
in this hall who dares to strike me one blow
with it, only he must promise that afterwards I
may strike him one blow with it, too.  He shall
strike me with the axe now, and I will strike
him with it a year from this day.'

"This was such a new way of proving
whether they were brave or not that for a
minute none of the knights answered.  Then the
King himself rose and went toward the man in
green.  'Give me your axe,' he said; 'none of
us here is afraid of your big talk; I will strike
you with the axe myself, and you shall strike
me with it whenever you like.'

"Then Gawain sprang from his seat.
Gawain was the King's nephew.  And he cried:
'My lord, let me try this game with him!  You
are the King, and if any harm should come to
you it would be the harm of all the country,
but one knight more or less will count but little.'

"Then many other knights begged the King
to do as Gawain had said, and the King thought
of it a moment, and then gave the axe, which
he had taken from the man in green, to Gawain.

"Sir Knight,' said the man in green, 'will
you tell me who you are?'

"'I am Gawain,' he said, 'the nephew of
King Arthur.'

"'I have heard of you,' said the other, 'and I
am glad that I shall receive my blow from so
great a knight.  But will you promise that a
year from now you will seek me and find me, so
that I may give you your blow in return?'

"'I do not know who you are or where you
live,' Gawain answered.  'If you will tell me
your name and where to find you, I will come
to you when the year is over.'

"'I will tell you those things,' said the man
in green, 'after you have struck me.  If I
cannot tell you then, you will be free of your
promise and you need not seek me.'

"Then the man in green came down from his
horse, knelt on the floor before Gawain, put his
long, green hair aside from his neck, and told
Gawain to strike.  Gawain swung the axe above
his head and brought it down upon the neck of
the man in green, and his head was cut cleanly
off and rolled upon the floor.  Instantly the
green man sprang after it and caught it in
his hands, by the long, green hair.  He sprang
upon his horse again and held up the head, with
its face toward Gawain.  'Sir Gawain,' it said
'seek for me till you find me, a year from now,
so that I may return your good blow.  Bring the
axe with you, and ask, wherever you go, for the
Knight of the Green Chapel.'  Then he rode out
of the hall and away, still carrying the head in
his hands.

"Of course Gawain and the King and all the
rest thought that this was the strangest
adventure that they had ever seen.  They were all
sorry for Gawain and they all wondered what
would become of him, but there was no danger
for a year, and that always seems a long time, at
the beginning of it.  So, as the time went on,
they almost forgot about the Knight of the
Green Chapel, and even Gawain himself seemed
to have no dread of him.  And the year went
past like other years.  Yet Gawain was not
forgetting his promise, and, as the time came near
when he must keep it, he began to wonder more
and more who this Knight of the Green Chapel
could be and where he must go to look for him.
'It may take me a long time to find him,' he said
to the King at last, 'and so I mean to leave the
court and to begin my search on All Saints' Day.'

"'Yes,' said the King,' that will be best.  And
we know all the places and nearly all the knights
here in the South and in the West of England,
and over in the East, but we have never
heard of this Knight of the Green Chapel,
so it will be best for you to seek him in the
North.'

"So, on All Saints' Day, King Arthur made a
feast, that all the knights of the court might be
together and bid Gawain good-by.  They called
it a feast, but there was no happiness in it.
They were all sad at the parting and with the
fear that Gawain would never come back.

"And when the time came they helped Gawain
to put on the finest armor that could be
found for him and he mounted his horse and left
them.  He rode slowly at first, and as soon as he
came to places that he did not know he began
to ask the people whom he met if they could tell
him where to find the Green Chapel and the
Knight of the Green Chapel.  But no one had
ever heard of such a place or of such a person.

"He went farther and farther into the North,
and as his time grew shorter he tried to travel
faster, for he felt that it would be a shame to
him if he did not find the Knight of the Green
Chapel by New Year's Day.  Up great hills he
went and down into deep valleys, across wide,
lonely plains, with freezing winds sweeping over
them, and through dark forests, where the wind
cried up among the treetops and the trees
groaned and sighed in answer.  Often he met
wild beasts, wolves that barked and leaped and
sprang about him and tried to pull down his
horse.  But he killed them or beat them and
drove them away.  Then he came to plains
where for many miles he saw no houses and no
people.  Often he had to sleep in his armor,
lying on the ground.  Often he had to go so long
without food that he was faint with hunger, as
well as weary.

"As the days went by the winter came on
rougher and stormier and colder.  Then the
winds that swept across the plains were full of
driving rain and sleet and snow.  They cut
against his face and almost blinded him, and his
horse could scarcely labor through the drifts and
stand against the storm.  The wet sleet found
its way into the joints of his armor and froze
there, and it froze into the chains of his mail and
choked them up, so that it was all rigid and
hard, and it was as if all that he wore were one
solid piece of iron or ice.  So terrible it was that
he almost forgot why he had come, and all that
he wanted was to find some place where he and
his horse could rest and be warm.  But at night
he must get off his horse, though he could
scarcely bend his limbs, in his frozen armor, and
lie down in it, with no shelter but a tree, or
perhaps a high rock, and try to sleep till the light
came, so that he could go on again.

"Yet wherever he saw any people he asked
them if they knew of the Knight of the Green
Chapel, and always they answered no.  Then he
told them how the knight looked, but they all
shook their heads or stared at him or laughed,
and they all said that they had never seen such
a knight.  Some of them thought that he must
be mad, to be wandering all by himself and
asking for a knight with green hair and a green
beard, and sometimes Gawain himself almost
thought that he must be mad.  Sometimes he
thought: 'I will hunt for him only till New
Year's Day.  If I have not found him then it is
his fault that he did not tell me where to come,
and I shall be free of my promise.'  And then
at other times he thought: 'I will not count my
promise as so small a thing; I will seek this
knight as long as I live, if I do not find him,
for the honor of King Arthur and the Round Table.'

"And the cold and the storm and the long,
rough journey seemed worst of all to Gawain on
Christmas Eve, for then he thought most of the
King and the Queen and the knights whom he
had left at Camelot.  He knew that they were
all together in the great hall now, that the fires
were blazing, that the minstrels were singing,
and that a noble feast was spread upon the
Round Table.  He thought of his own place at
that table, where he had sat a year ago, empty
now.  Did the others look at that seat and think
of him and wonder where he was?  It was a
common thing, he knew, for Arthur's knights to be
away from the hall seeking adventures, and he
knew that those who were left behind went on
with their feasting at such times as these, just as
if all were there.  No, it was a little thing to
them that he was gone, he thought.  They were
laughing together and eating and drinking, and
perhaps some one was telling them some strange
old tale, and they were warm and happy; and
the light of the fires and the torches was
shining on the windows of the hall, so that the
people of the country miles away could see it and
could say: 'King Arthur and his knights are at
Camelot to-night keeping the Christmas feast.'  And
here was he alone, cold, hungry, weary,
riding over the rough ways and through the
rough night, to find a man who was to kill him.

"Then there came another thought that made
him stronger: 'The honor of the Round Table
to-night is not all with those who sit about it;
it is here with me too.  I am here because it
was I who dared to come, for the King and for
all of them.  If I never go back the King and all
of them will know that, and they will not forget.
And now my time is short and I must not rest
any more.  I will ride all night and go as far as
I can to find the Knight of the Green Chapel by
New Year's Day.'

"So Gawain rode all night.  In the morning
he was in a great forest, where it would have
been too dark for him to ride, but for the snow
that lay everywhere, so that he could dimly see
the black trunks of the trees against it.  And
before the first cold light of the late morning fell
into the forest, he saw it touch the top of a high
hill before him, and there he saw a castle.  It
was one of the greatest castles he had ever seen,
with strong towers and thick walls and high
ramparts.  And as soon as he saw it, it seemed
to him as if the last strength went out of him
and his horse too, so that they could scarcely
climb the hill to come to the gate and ask if they
might come in.

"But they reached the gate and the porter
said: 'Come in, Sir Knight; the lord of the
castle will welcome you and you can stay as long
as you will.'  And the lord of the castle did
welcome him and Gawain let his men lead him to
a chamber, where they took off his armor and
gave him a rich robe to wear.  Then they led
him back to the hall and placed him at the table
with the lord and his wife and his daughter.

"They asked him who he was, and he told
them that he was Gawain, a knight of the
Round Table.  'It is a proud day for us,' said
the lord, 'so far away up here in the North,
when a knight comes to us from the court of
King Arthur, and now you will stay with us
and help us keep our Christmas.'

"'No,' said Gawain, 'I cannot stay, for I
must go on and find the Knight of the Green
Chapel,' and then he told them all that he
knew about this knight and why he had made
this journey.

"'Then you will stay with us,' said the lord,
'for the Green Chapel is only two miles from
here, and on New Year's Day some one of my
servants shall show you the way there.'

"So Gawain stayed, and, on the third day
after he had come to the castle, the lord told
him that on the next day he was going
hunting and asked Gawain if he would go too.
'No,' Gawain answered, 'it is only four days
now before I must go to the Knight of the
Green Chapel.  I have no magic, such as he
has, to guard myself against him, and he will
kill me.  It is not a time now for me to think
of hunting or of other pleasures.  I must think
of more solemn things.'

"'Then shall we make a bargain?' said the
lord.  'I will go to the hunt to-morrow, and
you shall stay here at the castle.  When I come
home I will give you all that I have got in the
hunt, and you shall give me all that you have
got by staying here.'

"'It shall be so, if you wish it,' said Gawain.

"The next morning the lord and his men
were away early at the hunt.  Gawain breakfasted
with the lady of the castle and her daughter,
and afterward they left him and he sat
alone in the hall.  Then the lord's daughter
came back, without her mother, and sat on the
seat beside him.  'Sir Knight,' she said, 'will
you tell me about King Arthur's court?'

"'What shall I tell you?' he asked.

"'We are so far away from all the world
here!' she said.  'We never see a town or a
court or any people, except those who live
here with us.  But sometimes we hear strange
things and beautiful things about Camelot and
Caerleon and London and the court of King
Arthur.  They say that we cannot believe how
grand it is, and they say that there are such
feasts and tournaments, and that all the knights
and the ladies are so happy there in King
Arthur's court!  And oh! will you tell me one
thing!  Is it true that every knight of King
Arthur's has some lady whom he loves more
than anybody else, and is it true that every
lady has some knight whom she loves, who
fights for her and wears something that she
gave him, a sleeve or a chain or a jewel, and
tells everybody that she is the most beautiful
lady in the world?'

"'There are many knights,' Gawain
answered, 'who have ladies whom they love and
who love them, and they do all the things that
you have said.'

"The girl looked at Gawain and was silent
for a little while, and then she said: 'Sir
Knight, is it too much that I am going to ask?
I would not ask you to be my knight, for there
must be many ladies in King Arthur's court
more beautiful and more noble than I am.
You would have to love some one of them, I
suppose.  Only do not tell me so, and I will not
ask you.  But after you have gone let me
remember you and love you, and I will try not
to think whether you love me or not.'

"'My child,' said Gawain, 'I am here in
your father's castle and he trusts me, and it is
not right that I should talk to you of such
things without his leave.  And besides that, it
is not right for me to think of such things now.
You know that I am going to find the Knight of
the Green Chapel.  Your father has promised
that on New Year's Day he will send me to
him.  Then the Knight of the Green Chapel
will kill me.  I have only three days more to
live, and it is no time for me to think of love.'

"'But why must you find this wicked Knight
of the Green Chapel?' she asked.  'Go back to
Camelot and tell the King and the knights that
you fought him and that he could not hurt you.
Nobody will know but us.  We never go to court
and we never would tell anybody what you had done.'

"'No, no,' said Gawain, 'I promised him that
I would find him.  Now I must find him or I
never could go back to King Arthur's court or
be one of his knights again.'

"Then the girl started to go out of the hall,
but when she was at the door she turned and
came back to Gawain.  'Will you let me kiss
you just once?' she said.  And Gawain let her
kiss him and she went away.

"At night, when the lord of the castle came
home from the hunt, he brought with him a
deer that he had killed.  He gave it to Gawain
and said: 'This is what I got in the hunt; now
give me what you got by staying behind.'

"Then Gawain gave him a kiss.  'Indeed,'
said the lord, 'I think that you have done
better than I.  Where did you get this?'

"'It was not in our bargain,' said Gawain,
'that I should tell you that.'

"'Very well, then,' said the lord, 'shall we
make the same bargain for to-morrow?'

"'Yes,' said Gawain, 'if you wish it.'

"So the next day the lord rode to the hunt
again and Gawain stayed behind, as he had
done before.  And again the lord's daughter
came to him as he sat in the hall.  'Sir Knight,'
she said, 'is it because you have some other
lady whom you love that you will not let me be
your lady?  I do not ask you to love me, you
know, only to let me love you.'

"'No,' Gawain answered, 'I have no lady,
and if I might have any now, I could love you
as well as any other, but I have only two more
days to live and I must not think of such things.'

"Then the girl kissed him twice and went
away.  When the lord came back that evening
he brought the head and the sides of a wild
boar that he had killed.  He gave these to
Gawain and Gawain gave him two kisses.  'You
always have better luck than I,' said the lord.

"Then they made the same bargain for the
third day, and in the morning the lord rode to
the hunt and Gawain stayed behind.  As he sat
in the hall the lord's daughter came to him
again.  'Sir Knight,' she said, 'since you will
do nothing else, will you not wear something
of mine, as the knights at King Arthur's court
do for their ladies?  See, this is it, my girdle
of green lace.  And it is good for a knight to
wear, for while you have this around your body
you can never be wounded.'

"Then Gawain thought that such a girdle as
this would indeed be of use to him, when the
time came for the Knight of the Green Chapel
to strike him with his axe.  So he took the
girdle and thanked her for it, and she kissed him
three times and went away.

"That night the lord of the castle brought
home the skin of a fox.  He gave it to Gawain
and Gawain gave him three kisses.  'Your
luck grows better every day,' said the lord.

"Early the next morning Gawain rose and
called for his armor and his horse.  One of
the lord's servants was to show him the way
to the Green Chapel.  The snow was falling
again and there was a fierce, cold wind.  It
was not daylight yet.  They rode over rough
hills and through deep valleys for a long time,
and at last, when it had grown as light as it
would be at all on such a dull, dreary day, the
servant stopped.  'You are not far now,' he
said, 'from the Green Chapel.  I can go with
you no farther.  Ride on into this valley.
When you are at the bottom of it look to your
left and you will see the chapel.'

"Then the servant turned back and left
Gawain alone.  He rode to the bottom of the
valley and looked about, but nothing like a
chapel did he see.  But at last he saw a hole in
a great rock, a cave, with vines, loaded down
with snow, almost hiding its mouth.  Then it
seemed to Gawain that he heard a sound inside
the cave, and he called aloud: 'Is the Knight
of the Green Chapel here?  Gawain has come
to keep his promise to him.  He has brought
his axe, so that he may pay back the blow that
he received a year ago.  Is the Knight of the
Green Chapel here?'

"Then a voice from the cave said: 'I am
here, Sir Gawain, and I am waiting for you.
You have kept your time well.'

"And then out of the cave came the Green
Knight.  It seemed to Gawain that he looked
stronger and fiercer than when he was at
Arthur's court, and that his hair and beard
were longer and of a brighter green.  'Give
me my axe,' he cried, 'and take off your helmet
and be ready for my stroke.  Let us not delay!'

"'I want no delay,' said Gawain, and he took
off his helmet, knelt down on the snow and bent
his neck, ready for the knight to strike.  The
Green Knight raised his axe, and then, in spite
of himself, Gawain drew a little away from him.

"'How is this?' said the Green Knight;
'are you afraid?  I did not flinch when you
struck me, a year ago.'

"'I shall not flinch again,' said Gawain;
'strike quickly.'

"Then the knight raised his axe a second
time and Gawain was as still as a stone.  But
this time the axe did not fall.  'Now I must
strike you,' said the Green Knight.

"'Strike, then, and do not talk about it,' said
Gawain; 'I believe you yourself are losing
heart.'

"This time the knight swung the axe quickly
up over his head and brought it down with a
mighty force upon Gawain's neck, and it made
only a little scratch.  The girdle of green lace
would not let him be wounded.  Then he sprang
up and drew his sword and cried: 'Now, Knight
of the Green Chapel, take care of yourself.  I
have kept my promise and let you strike me
once, but I warn you that if you strike again I
shall resist you.'

"'Put up your sword,' the Knight of the
Green Chapel answered; 'I do not want to
harm you.  I could have used you much worse
than I have, if I had wished.  I tried only to
prove you, and you are the bravest and the
truest knight that I have ever found.  I am the
lord of the castle where you have stayed for this
last week.  I knew where you got your kisses,
for I myself sent my daughter to you to try
you, and you would not do what you thought
would not be right toward me, and you would
not let any thoughts of love turn you aside from
your promise to the Knight of the Green Chapel.
You were well tried and you proved most true.
It was because of that and because you kept
your word to me on the first two days that I
went to the hunt, that I did not strike you the
first or the second time that I raised my axe.
But the third time I did strike you, because
you were untrue to me in one little thing.  For
you said that you would give me all that you
got by staying in the castle, yet you did not
give me the girdle of green lace.  It was I who
sent that to you by my daughter, too.  But you
kept it only to save your life, and so I forgive
you, and to show you that I forgive you, you
may keep it now always.'

"But Gawain tore off the girdle and threw it
at the feet of the Knight of the Green Chapel.
'Take it back!' he cried, 'I do not deserve ever
to be called an honorable knight again!  I came
here for the honor of the Round Table, and
then I broke my promise to you.  Tell me why
you came to our court and why you brought
me to this shame, and then I will go back to
King Arthur and tell him that I am not worthy
any longer to be one of his knights.  He will
ask me why you did this, so tell me and let me
go away, for now I have lied to you and I
cannot look you in the face.'

"'I did it,' said the Knight of the Green
Chapel, 'because the great enchantress, Queen
Morgan-le-Fay, King Arthur's sister, who hates
him, told me that all his knights were cowards.
She said that all who praised them lied or were
themselves deceived and that some good knight
ought to go and prove them to be the cowards
that they were.  So I went to try whether they
were brave or not, and it was by the magic of
Queen Morgan-le-Fay that I was not killed when
you cut off my head.  But now I see that what
I did was wrong.  It was Morgan-le-Fay, I see
now, who hoped to bring shame on King
Arthur's court, because she hated him.  And you
have shown me that Arthur's knights are brave
and true, for you took my challenge and came
up here into the North to find me and to let me
kill you.  Now come back with me to my
castle and help us to keep the festival of the
New Year.  Take up your girdle and come.'

"But Gawain was still filled with shame and
horror at what he had done.  'I will not go
back with you,' he said, 'but I will keep the
girdle to remind me of this time.  If I ever feel
that I am doing better things and if I ever
begin to grow proud of them, I will look at this
girdle and it will make me remember how I
broke my word.'

"And Gawain would not listen to anything
more that the knight said, but he mounted his
horse and turned him toward the south and rode
away.  Gawain never knew what happened to
him on that journey back to Camelot.  Perhaps
the nights were as cold and the ways as rough
as they had been before.  Perhaps the wild
beasts came against him again.  Perhaps the
storms still drove the snow and the sleet against
him, so that they cut him in the face and froze
into his armor.  He cared for none of these
things and he remembered none of them
afterwards.  His one thought was to get back to
Camelot and tell the King that he was no
longer worthy to be his knight, and then to go
where no one who had known him should ever
see him again.

"And so he rode on, as fast as he could, for
he did not know how many days, and at last,
in the early winter evening, he saw the glow in
the windows of the castle at Camelot.  Once
more he hurried his horse till he reached the
gate.  He threw himself down from the saddle
and hastened to the hall, where a great shout
went up: 'Gawain is alive and he has come
back!' and the knights and the ladies crowded
around him to ask him where he had been and
what he had seen and done.  He pushed his
way through them all and threw himself down
upon the floor before the King.  He told all of
his story, how he had gone out for the honor
of the Round Table and how he had broken
his word and been shamed, and at the end he
held up the girdle of green lace and said: 'My
lord, I shall leave you now and I shall never
see you again, for I am not worthy to be your
knight, but I shall carry this with me, and
shall always wear it, so that I never can forget
my shame."

"And the King answered: 'Gawain, you are
still among the best of my knights.  You failed
a little at last, but it was no coward and no false
knight who went up there to seek his death
and to keep a promise that he need not have
kept.  Wear your girdle, but it shall be no
shame to you.  And that it may be none all my
knights shall wear girdles of green lace like it.

"So the story says that all of King Arthur's
knights wore green lace girdles in honor of
Gawain.  I don't know what became of the
girdles afterwards, but they cannot have worn
them always, or at least Gawain cannot have
worn his.  For you know he could never be
wounded while he had it on, and he certainly
was wounded afterwards.  But I will tell you
about that when I get to it."

About the time that we got to the end of this
story we came to a place which the driver said
was as far from Glastonbury as he had ever
been in this direction.  We stopped at a little
inn by the road, and the driver asked the way
to Queen Camel.  We also asked the man who
told him if he had ever heard of a hill or of any
sort of place about here called Camelot, but he
never had.  So we went on to find it for
ourselves.  After more riding and more asking of
the way and more showers, we came to Queen
Camel.  It was past luncheon-time then, and,
what was more to the point, it was past the
horse's luncheon-time.  So we decided that we
would not go any farther till we had all had
something to eat.

The Bell looked like the best hotel in the place,
so we went there and astonished the proprietor
and all the servants by asking for something to
eat.  But we got it, and while we were at
luncheon the driver put the horse in the stable and
then talked with the proprietor, to find out
whether he knew anything about Camelot.
Now the keeper of this bit of an hotel must
have been a remarkably intelligent man, for he
really did know something about it.  He came
in to see us and he said that he thought that it
must be Cadbury Castle that we were looking
for.  Then a great light shone upon me and I
remembered what I ought to have remembered
before, that one of my books at home had said
that it was called Cadbury Castle now.  "But
do they not call it Camelot too?" I asked him.
I did not like to give up that name.

"Oh, yes, sir," he said, "they call it Camelot too."

"And do they say that King Arthur lived there?"

"No, sir, he didn't live there; he placed his
army there."

Then the landlord went away and came back
with a big book, a history of Somersetshire, or
something of that sort, to show us what it had
to say about Cadbury Castle.  It did not say
much that I did not know before, but it said
enough to prove what I wanted to know most
of all.  And that was that this Cadbury Castle
was without any doubt the place that we were
looking for.  We finished our luncheon, the
landlord showed us our way, and we went on again.

It was only a little way now.  We were to find
a steep road that led up the side of the hill to
Cadbury Castle.  It was too steep, we were told,
to take our carriage up, and we should have to
leave it at the bottom and walk.  And so it
proved.  We found the hill and the steep little
track up its side.  We got down from the
carriage, and, while we waited for the driver to
find a safe place to leave the horse, we gazed up
the hill, along the rough little road, and knew
that at last we were before the gates of Camelot.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BOY FROM THE FOREST`:

.. _`"The city and the fortress of the rabbits"`:

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   :align: center
   :alt: "The city and the fortress of the rabbits"

   "The city and the fortress of the rabbits"

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BOY FROM THE FOREST

.. vspace:: 2

We walked up the steep road, and just before
we came to the top of the hill the rain began
again.  There was one little house near the top
and we decided to let Camelot wait for a few
minutes longer and go into the house and stay
till the rain stopped.

The woman of the house seemed to be glad
to see us, and she asked us to write our names
in her visitors' book.  The names and the dates
in the book showed that Camelot had some six
or eight visitors a year.  Of course we tried to
get the woman to tell us something about the
place, and of course we failed.  She knew that
it was called Cadbury Castle and sometimes
Camelot and sometimes the Camp.  She knew
that the well close by her house was called King
Arthur's Well, but she did not know why.  The
water in it was not good to drink, and in dry
times they could not get water from it at all.
She got drinking-water and in dry times all the
water that she used from St. Anne's Wishing
Well, a quarter of a mile around the hill.  She
did not know what that name meant either.
She used to have a book that told all about the
place, but she couldn't show it to us, because it
had been lent to somebody and had never been
returned.  The vicar had studied a good deal
about the place too, and he knew all about it.
Could we find the vicar and get him to tell us
about it?  Oh, no, it wasn't the present vicar,
it was the old vicar, and he was dead.

So we gave up learning anything and waited
for the rain to stop, and then went out to see as
much as we could for ourselves.  The hilltop
was broad and level.  I can't tell just how broad,
because I am no judge of acres, but I believe it
was several.  It had a low wall of earth around
it, covered with grass, of course, like all the rest
of the place.  When we stood on the top of this
wall and looked down, we saw that the ground
sloped away from us till it made a sort of ditch,
and then rose again and made another earth
wall, a little way down the hillside.  Then it did
the same thing again, and yet once more.  So
in its time this hilltop must have had four strong
walls around it.  It really looked much more
like a fort or camp than like a city.  It seemed
too small for a city, though it might have been
a pretty big camp.  If we had been looking for
hard facts, I think we should have believed what
the hotel-keeper had said, that this was not
where King Arthur lived, but where he placed
his army.

I remembered reading somewhere that the
Britons and the Romans and the Saxons had all
held this place at different times.  I had read,
too, I was sure, that parts of old walls, of a
dusky blue stone, and old coins had been found
here.  It was a fine place for a camp or a castle.
It was so high and breezy and we could see for
so many miles across the country, that we could
understand how useful and pleasant it must
have been for either or for both.  It was
pleasant enough now, this broad, grassy hilltop, with
its four grassy walls and the woodland sloping
away from it all around.  But nobody lived here
now to enjoy it—nobody, that is to say, but the
rabbits.  For the place is theirs now, and they
dig holes in the ground and make their houses
where King Arthur's castle stood, where he
and his knights sat in the hall about the Round
Table, and where all the greatest of the world
came to see all that was richest and noblest and
best for kings and knights to be and to enjoy.

The rabbits scuttled across our way, as we
walked about, and leaped into their holes, when
we came near, and then looked timidly out
again, when we had gone past, and wondered
what we were doing and what right we had
here in their Camelot.  There were only these
holes now, where once there were palaces and
churches, and no traces of old glories, but the
walls of earth and turf.  Yet it seemed better
to me that Camelot should be left alone and
forgotten, like this, the city and the fortress of the
rabbits, but still high and open and fresh and
free, than that it should be a poor little town, full
of poor little people, like Camelford.  Helen said
that she thought so too, when I asked her, and
she was willing that this should be Camelot, if
I thought that it really was.

"Really and truly and honestly," I said, "I
think that this is as likely to have been
Camelot as any place that we have seen or shall see.
It is lucky for us that we know more about it
than the people who live about here do.  If we
did not I am afraid it would not interest us
much.  I think that I have read somewhere
that the King and his knights were still here on
the hilltop, kept here and made invisible by
some enchantment, that at certain times they
could be seen, and that some people had really
seen them.  I don't believe this story, but while
we are here let us believe at least, with all our
might, that we are really and truly in Camelot.

"Now here is a story, with Camelot in it,
that you ought to hear.  You must not mind
if it makes you think of a story that we saw
once in the fire.  There are different ways of
telling the same story, you know, and this is a
different way of telling that same story.

"Once, when Arthur was first King of
England, he had a good knight called Sir
Percivale.  He was killed in a tournament by a
knight whom no one knew.  Some who saw the
fight said that it was not a fair one and that
Sir Percivale was as good as murdered.  The
knight who killed him wore red armor, and
once, when his visor was up, Arthur saw his
face.  No one knew where the knight went
afterward and Arthur could never find him to
make him answer for the death of Sir Percivale.

"Now this Sir Percivale had seven sons and
a daughter, and six of his sons were killed also,
in tournaments or battles.  But the youngest
of the sons was not old enough yet to be a
knight, and when his mother had lost her
husband and all her sons but him, she resolved that
he should never be a knight.  His name was
Percivale, like his father's.  It was right, she
thought, for her to keep this last son that she
had safe and not to let him fight and be killed,
as his father and his brother's had been.  And
she feared so much that when he grew up he
would want to be a knight, like the others, that
she resolved that he should never know anything
about knights or tournaments or wars or arms.

"She took him far away from the place
where they had lived, and made a home in the
woods.  It was far from the towns and the
tournaments and the courts, and it was even
away from the roads that led through the
country.  It was a lonely place that the mother
chose, and she hoped that no one would ever
come to it from the world that she had left.
She brought her daughter with her, I suppose,
though the story says nothing about her just
here, and she brought nobody else but
servants—women and boys and old men.  Nobody in
her house was ever allowed to speak of knights
or arms or battles or anything that had to do
with them.  She would not even have any big,
strong horses kept about the place, because
they reminded her of the war horses that
knights rode.  She tried to bring up her boy
so that he should know only of peaceful things.
He should know the trees and the flowers of
the woods, she thought; he should know the
goats and the sheep and the cows that they
kept, how the fruits grew in the orchard, how
the birds lived in the trees and the bees in their
hive; but he should never know the cruel
ways of men out in the world.  He should see
the axe of the woodman, not the battle-axe;
the scythe, not the sword; the crook of the
shepherd, not the spear.

"So the boy grew up in the forest and ran
about wherever he would and climbed the trees
and followed the squirrels and studied the
nests of the birds and knew all the plants that
grew and all the animals that lived about him.
If it had not been for many things that his
mother taught him he would have been almost
like one of the animals of the wood himself.
He could run almost as fast as the deer and he
could climb almost as well as the squirrel, and
he could sing as well as some of the birds.

"When he grew a little older his mother let
him have a bow and arrows to play with
and shoot at marks, but nobody told him that
men used bows and arrows to shoot at one
another or that men ever wanted to harm one
another.  But he began to shoot at the birds with
his arrows, and at last he hit one of them and
killed it.  Then he looked at the dead bird
lying at his feet and he heard the other birds
singing all around him.  And he thought: 'I
have done a dreadful thing; a little while ago
this bird was singing too, and was as happy as
the rest of them, and now it can never sing any
more or be happy any more, because I have
killed it.'  And he broke his bow and threw it
away and he threw himself down on the ground
beside the little dead bird and cried at what he
had done.  And when his mother saw how
grieved he was she said that all the birds
should be driven away, so that they should not
trouble him.  But Percivale begged her to let
them stay.  He liked to hear them sing, and to
drive them off would be a crueler thing than
he had done already.  And his mother thought:
'The boy is right; I brought him here to find
peace and safety for both of us, and why
should I not let the poor birds stay in peace
and safety too?'

"But it was foolish for the poor woman to
think that she could keep her boy so that he
would never know anything of the world.  The
world was all around him, no matter how far
off, and it was sure some time to come where
he was.  And so, one day, as he was wandering
in the wood, he saw three horses coming,
larger and stronger and finer than any horses he
had ever seen before.  And on their backs, he
thought, were three men, but he could not feel
sure, for they did not look like any men whom
he had ever seen.  They seemed to be all
covered with iron, which was polished so that it
glistened where the light touched it, and they
wore many gay and beautiful colors besides.
He stood and looked at them till they came
close to him, and then one of them said: 'My
boy, have you seen a knight pass this way?'

"'I do not know what a knight is,' Percivale
answered.

"'We are knights,' the man on the horse
said; 'have you seen anyone like us?'

"But Percivale was wondering so much at
what he saw that he could not answer.  'What
is this?' he asked, touching the knight's shield.

"'That?' the knight answered, 'that is my shield.'

"'And what is it for?'

"'To keep other knights from hitting me
with their spears or their swords.'

"'Spears?  What are they?'

"'This is a spear,' the knight answered,
showing him one.

"'And what is this?'

"'That is a saddle.'

"'And what is this?'

"'A sword.'

"And so Percivale asked the knights about
everything that they wore and everything
that they carried and all that was on their
horses.  'And where did you get these things?'
he asked.  'Did you always wear them?'

"'No,' the knight answered; 'King Arthur
gave me these arms when he made me a knight.'

"'Then you were not always a knight?'
Percivale asked again.

"'Why, no, I was a squire, a young man, like
you, and King Arthur made me a Knight and
gave me these arms.'

"'Who is King Arthur, and where is he?'

"'He is the King of the country, and he lives
at Camelot.'

"Then Percivale ran home as fast as he could
and said to his mother: 'Mother, I saw some
knights in the forest, and one of them told me
that he was not a knight always, but King
Arthur made him one, and before that he was a
young man like me.  And now I want to go to
King Arthur, too, and ask him to make me a
knight, so that I can wear bright iron things
like them and ride on a big horse.'

"The instant that she heard the word
'knights' the mother knew that all her care
was lost.  The boy was a man now.  He had
seen what other men were like and she knew
that he would never be happy again till he was
like the rest of them.  Before her mind, all at
once, everything came back—the court, the
field of the tournament, the men all dressed in
steel, with their sharp, cruel spears, the
gleaming lines charging against each other, the
knights falling from their horses and rolling on
the ground.  Her brain whirled around as she
thought of all this, and her one last son in the
midst of it, to be killed, perhaps, as the rest had
been.  But she knew that he must go—that he
would go—nothing could keep him with her now.

"'My son,' she said, 'if you will leave me
and be a knight, like those that you have seen,
go to King Arthur.  His are the best of knights
and among them you will learn all that you
ought to know.  Before you are a knight the
King will make you swear that you will be
always loyal and upright, that you will be faithful,
gentle, and merciful, and that you will fight
for the right of the poor and the weak.
Percivale, some knights forget these things, after
they have sworn them, but you will not forget.
Remember them the more because I tell them
to you now.  Be ready always to help those
who need help most, the poor and the weak
and the old and children and women.  Keep
yourself in the company of wise men and talk
with them and learn of them.  Percivale, the
King will make you swear, too, that you will
fear shame more than death.  And I tell you
that.  I have lost your father and your brothers,
but I would rather lose you, too, than not to
know that you feared shame more than death.'

"Then, from the horses that his mother had,
Percivale chose the one he thought the best.
It was not a war horse, of course, and it was
not even a good saddle horse, but it would
carry him.  He put some old pieces of cloth on
the horse's back, for a saddle, and with more of
these, and bits of cord and woven twigs he tried
to make something to look like the trappings
that he had seen on the horses of the knights.
Then he found a long pole and sharpened the
end of it, to make it look like a spear.  When
he had done all that he could he got on the
back of the horse, bade his mother good-by, and
rode away to find the court of King Arthur.

"The King and the Queen and their knights
were in the great hall of the castle at Camelot,
when a strange knight, dressed in red armor,
came in and walked straight to where the King
and the Queen sat.  A page was just offering
to the Queen a gold goblet of wine.  The red
knight seized the goblet and threw the wine in
the Queen's face.  Then he said: 'If there is
any one here who is bold enough to avenge this
insult to the Queen and to bring back this
goblet, let him follow me and I will wait for him in
the meadow near the castle!'  Then he left the
hall, took his horse, which he had left at the
door, and went to the meadow.

"In the hall all the knights jumped from their
places.  But for an instant they only stood and
stared at one another.  They remembered the
Green Knight, and they thought that this other
knight would never dare to do what he had
done, unless he had some magic to guard him
against them.  I am sure that in a moment some
one of them would have gone after him, but just
in that moment a strange-looking young man
rode straight into the hall, on a poor, old,
boney horse.  He looked so queer, with his
simple dress and the saddle and trappings that he
had made himself, and his rough pole for a
spear, that the knights almost forgot the insult
to the Queen in looking at him, and some of
them laughed as they saw him ride through the
hall toward the King, with no more thought of
fear than if he had been a king himself.  He
came to where Kay, King Arthur's seneschal,
stood, and said to him: 'Tall man, is that King
Arthur who sits there?'

"'What do you want with King Arthur?'
said Kay.

"'My mother told me,' the young man answered,
'to come to King Arthur and be made
a knight by him.'

"'You are not fit to be a knight,' said Kay;
'go back to your cows and your goats.'  Kay
was a rough sort of fellow and he was always
saying unpleasant things without waiting to find
out what he was talking about.

"Then a dwarf came close to the boy and
cried out: 'Percivale, you are welcome here!
I know that you will be one of the best of
knights, for I knew your father and your
brothers, and they were all good knights!'

"And Kay was so angry with the dwarf for
speaking in this way that he struck him and
knocked him down.  Now when Arthur had
seen the red knight come into the hall and
insult the Queen and then go away again, he had
been as much astonished as any of the knights,
and he had thought, just as they had, that he
must have some charm to protect him.  But
he had had another thought, and it was: 'Where
have I seen the face of that knight
before?'  And when the young man had come into the
hall he had thought again: 'I have seen that
face, too, before.' But when he heard the
dwarf call him by name he remembered it all.
'Young man,' he said, 'are you the son of my
old knight, Sir Percivale?  I know that you
are, because you are so much like him, and the
man who killed your father was here just now
and insulted the Queen and all of us.'

"'Yes, yes,' Kay shouted, 'go after him,
boy, and avenge your father and avenge the
Queen and bring back her golden goblet!  And
when you have killed him you can have his
horse and his armor, and then you will look fit
to be made a knight.'

"'I will do what you say,' the boy answered,
and he turned his horse and rode out of the
hall again.  When he came to the meadow the
red knight was there, riding up and down.
'Boy,' he said, 'do you know if anyone is
coming from the hall to take this gold cup from me?'

"'I have come from the hall,' Percivale
answered, 'to take that gold cup from you.'

"'Go back and tell the King,' said the red
knight, 'to send a man, a knight, to take it.
And tell him that I will not wait much longer.'

"'I mean to take it from you myself,' said
Percivale again, 'so be ready for me.'

"Then Percivale made his poor old horse go
as fast as it could, and he came against the red
knight with his pointed pole.  The knight tried
to strike the pole aside with his spear, but
Percivale hit him fairly with it and knocked him
off his horse.  And in falling he managed
somehow to break his neck.

"All that had passed in the hall since the red
knight had appeared there had passed so
quickly that the King and the knights had
scarcely had time to know what was going on
at all till it was all over.  But when Percivale
had gone to find the red knight, Uwain, King
Arthur's nephew, said: 'Kay, it was not right
for you to send such a boy as that after a
knight who is no doubt a hard fighter.  The
knight will kill him, and then a double disgrace
will fall upon the court, that of letting the boy
be killed and that of sending no good man to
avenge the insult to the Queen.  Now I will
go and see if I am in time to save the boy and
punish the knight.'

"So Uwain went to the meadow and there
he found Percivale trying to take off the dead
knight's armor.  He could not do it, because
he knew nothing about armor and did not
know how it was fastened.  So Uwain showed
him how to take it off and then how to dress
himself in it.  'And now,' said Uwain, 'come
to King Arthur and I know that he will gladly
make you a knight, for you have shown that
you are worthy to be one.'

"'No, 'said Percivale, 'I will not go back
now.  But tell me, what is the name of the tall
man who told me to follow this knight?'

"'He is Sir Kay,' Uwain answered, 'King
Arthur's seneschal.'

"Then Percivale said: 'Take this gold cup
back to the Queen and tell her that I have
avenged the insult to her.  Tell King Arthur
that wherever I go I will be his servant and
will try to do him what honor I can, but tell
Sir Kay that I will never come back to King
Arthur's court till I have met him and punished
him for striking the dwarf who greeted me when
I came into the hall.  My mother told me to
fight for the poor and the weak, and I am sure
that dwarf is weak and I ought to fight for him.'

"When Uwain went back to the hall with
these messages Kay laughed, but I am not sure
that he felt quite comfortable.  He had had bad
luck before in making fun of young men who
turned out well in spite of their simple looks.
Perhaps you may like to know how the dwarf
knew who Percivale was.  It was very simple.
He used to live in Percivale's father's house,
and he knew him because he was so much like
his father.

"And Percivale was riding away from the
court and did not know or care where he was
going.  But after awhile he met a knight who
asked him whence he came.  'I come from the
court of King Arthur,' he answered.

"And the knight said: 'I am the enemy of
King Arthur and of all his men, and when I
meet any of them I kill them, if I can, and so I
will kill you now, if I can.'

"So they took their places and charged
against each other with their spears.  Percivale
had a real spear now.  And Percivale
threw the knight off his horse and he begged
for mercy.  'You shall have mercy,' Percivale
said, 'if you will go to the court of King Arthur
and tell him that Percivale sent you and that
Percivale will never come to his court again till
he has punished Sir Kay for striking the dwarf.'

"The knight did as Percivale bade him, and
the story says that within a week he overcame
sixteen knights and made every one of them go
to the court and tell King Arthur that
Percivale had sent him and that Percivale would
never come back till he had met Sir Kay and
punished him for striking the dwarf.  Now you
can imagine that, when these knights came into
the hall, two or three of them a day, and
brought always this same message, Kay kept
getting more and more uncomfortable.  Every
new one who came proved over again what a
tough fighter Percivale was and every one of
them told the King and the court that
Percivale was waiting for a chance to fight with
Kay.  And then the other knights began to
blame Kay for making such a fine young man
leave the court.  For it was clear, they said, that
he would some time be one of the best knights
among them all.  At last King Arthur said
that he himself, with some of his best knights,
would go to search for Percivale.  And Kay,
who was really no coward, went with them.

"And Percivale kept on his way.  And one
evening, when it was time for him to find a
place to stay for the night, he saw a great castle
before him.  He knocked on the gate and a
young man with a thin, pale face put his head
through an opening in the battlement and
looked at him.  Then the young man came and
opened the gate for Percivale and led him to the
hall.  There were eighteen young men there,
all thin and with pale faces, like the first.  They
took off Percivale's armor and they all sat down
together.  Then five young women came into
the hall, and Percivale thought that one of them,
who was the lady of the castle, was the most
beautiful he had ever seen.  Mind, I don't say
that I think so; I say that Percivale thought
so.  For, as one of the beautiful, wonderful
books that tells this story says, 'whiter was her
skin than the bloom of crystal, and her hair and
her two eyebrows were blacker than jet, and
on her cheeks were two red spots, redder than
whatever is reddest.'  She was dressed in satin,
but it was old and faded and worn.

"Afterwards two nuns came into the hall.
One of them carried a flask of wine and the
other had six loaves of bread.  'Lady,' said one
of the nuns, 'there is not so much bread and
wine left in our convent as we have brought
you here.'  Then they all sat at a table, and
Percivale saw that the lady of the castle was giving
more of the bread and the wine to him than
to any of the others.  So he took all the bread
and wine and divided them equally among all
who were at the table.  And when it was time
they led Percivale to his chamber.

"And the rest still sat in the hall.  Then one
of the young men said to the lady of the castle:
'Sister, go to this young man and tell him that
you will be his wife, if he will rescue you and
the rest of us from our enemies.'

"'I cannot do that,' she answered.  'He may
not want me for his wife; if he did he would
ask me.'

"'Sister,' said the young man again, 'we
have no more food and we cannot hold the
castle any longer.  This is the only hope we have.
You must do this or we will leave you, and
your enemies may do what they like with you
and your castle.'

"So she left them and went to the door of
Percivale's chamber and opened it.  It was
dark and he was asleep, but he heard her
weeping and awoke.  'Who are you,' he asked, 'and
why are you weeping?  Can I help you?'

"'My lord,' she answered, 'if you do not help
me nothing can ever help me.  I am the lady
of the castle.  My father owned this castle and
all the lands around it.  There was a wicked
knight, named Sir Mordred, who wanted me to
be his wife, but I would not, and so, after my
father died and left me the castle and the lands,
Sir Mordred made war upon me.  I had not
men enough to fight with him, and so he has
taken everything I had except this castle.  But
this castle is so strong that the few men whom
you have seen were able to hold it as long as we
had food.  They are my foster brothers.
Mordred and his men always watch the castle to
see that no one goes out from it to bring food,
and so at last all that we had was gone.  Then
the nuns, who are permitted to go wherever
they like, brought us food, but now they have
no more.  And Mordred watches us so closely
that he will know that we have no more food,
and he will come against us at once and take the
castle, unless you can help us.  So the young
men told me that I must come to you and tell
you that I would be your wife if you would
save us, for there was no other way.  Forgive
me, Sir Knight, for doing what I must do, and
help me and my brothers, if you can.'

"Then Percivale answered: 'I know that you
do not say this because you want to be my wife,
and so I will not ask it of you.  Marry whomever
you will.  To-morrow, if this Sir Mordred
comes, I will do my best to help you.'

"And so we have come to Mordred.  I am
almost sorry that I have to tell you about him,
but I should have to tell you, some time, and it
may as well be now.  Mordred was the brother
of Gawain, and so he was King Arthur's
nephew.  He was a knight of the Round
Table, and he was the wickedest and most
treacherous man who was ever in Arthur's court.
When people tell you that they do not like
King Arthur because he was too good—and
somebody is sure to tell you that some
time—ask them what they think of his letting such
a creature as Mordred be a knight of his
Round Table.  Still, I suppose Arthur did not
know how bad Mordred was.  Good people are
often slow to believe that there are any bad
people, and Arthur was so.

"Well, in the morning, surely enough, there
were Mordred's men all around the castle.
There were tents set up and knights were
riding up and down on horses, and banners were
flying, and it all looked as if they had come
to fight against a city, instead of against five
women and eighteen starved young men.
Breakfast did not take long that morning,
because there was nothing in the castle to eat.
So, as soon as he was up, Percivale put on his
armor and called for his horse and rode out
of the castle.  He came near to some of the
knights who were riding about and seemed to
be so ready to fight, and called out that he
wanted to see Sir Mordred and to talk with him.

"When Sir Mordred came, Percivale said to
him: 'I challenge you alone, Sir Mordred to
fight with me alone for the right of the lady of
this castle.  If you beat me you shall keep all
that you have taken from her and you shall
have the castle too.  If I beat you she shall
keep the castle and you shall give her back
all that she had before.  Do you agree to this?'

"And Mordred said: 'I agree.'

"It was a short battle.  They charged against
each other once, and Mordred's spear was
broken against Percivale's shield, but Percivale's
spear went through Mordred's shield and
through his shoulder.  Mordred could not fight
any more after that, so he promised to give
back to the lady of the castle all the lands and
everything else that he had taken from her, if
Percivale would not kill him.  Percivale made
him promise, too, that his men should take to
the castle that very day enough food and drink
for a hundred men and their horses.  Then he
sent Mordred himself to Camelot, to say to the
King and the court that Percivale would never
come back there till he had punished Sir Kay
for striking the dwarf.  But when Mordred
got to Camelot the King and Kay and a good
many of the other knights had gone to hunt
for Percivale, and there were not many left to
hear the message.

"Then Percivale took his leave of the people
of the castle and rode on his way.  He rode
all day, and in the evening he came to the cell
of a hermit, who made him welcome, and he
stayed with him all night.  In the morning he
left the cell to go on his way, but just in front
of the door he saw something that made him
stop to look at it.  There had been a fall of snow
in the night, and a little way from the hermit's
cell a hawk had killed a wild fowl and the snow
was stained with its blood.  Something had
frightened the hawk away and now a raven had
lighted on the snow near the wild fowl.  It was
this that made Percivale stop to look, for the
blackness of the raven and the whiteness of
the snow and the red of the blood made him
think of the black hair of the lady of the castle
where he had stayed, and of her white skin, and
of the red in her cheeks.  This must have
been a pleasant thought, for Percivale stood
there thinking it and gazing at the blood on
the snow for a long time.

"Now it happened that King Arthur's tent
had been pitched for the night near this very
place.  And Arthur came out of his tent and saw
some one leaning on a spear and looking upon
the ground.  And he told one of his young men
to go and see who it was.  So the young man
rode to where Percivale stood and said: 'Who
are you, and what are you doing here?'

"But Percivale was thinking so much of the
raven and the snow and the blood and the lady
of the castle that he gave no answer, and then
the young man thrust at him with his spear.
Then Percivale turned and struck the young
man with his own spear and knocked him off
his horse, and he went back to tell the King
how he had fared.  And Kay said: 'I will go
and make him tell me who he is.'

"So Kay came and said and did very much
as the young man had done, and Percivale
knocked him off his horse too, and in the fall
he broke his arm.  Kay's horse galloped back
alone to where the King and the knights were
and Kay had to walk back.  'Now, I will go,'
said Gawain.  'It is likely, Kay, that you spoke
to him rudely, for you do speak rudely
sometimes.  The knight may be deep in some
thoughts in which he does not like to be
disturbed, but I will try to bring him back.'

.. vspace:: 2

.. _`"Kay's horse galloped back alone"`:

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   [Illustration: "Kay's horse galloped back alone" 
   (missing from book)]

.. vspace:: 2

"It used to be said that Gawain could speak
so well that nobody could ever refuse him
anything that he asked.  He went to Percivale and
stood still beside him for a moment and then said
to him: 'If I thought that it would be pleasant
to you to hear it, I would give you a message
from King Arthur.  He wishes that you would
come to his tent.  Two others have come here
before me to speak to you.'

"'Yes,' said Percivale, 'and they spoke to
me rudely and attacked me.  And it annoyed
me, because I was looking at the snow and the
raven and the blood, and I was thinking of the
face and the hair and the cheeks of the lady
whom I fought for yesterday.  But tell me, is
Sir Kay with King Arthur?'

"'Yes,' said Gawain, 'and he was the second
of the men who came to speak to you, and the
fall from his horse that you gave him broke his arm.'

"'Ah, then I am glad,' said Percivale, 'for
now I have punished him for striking the dwarf.'

"'For striking the dwarf?' Gawain repeated,
'then you are Percivale!  This is good news!
Come back with me to the King, for he and all
of us have left Camelot to seek for you.'

"'Yes,' Percivale answered, 'I can come
back with you now, for I have met Sir Kay and
have punished him for striking the dwarf.'

"So Gawain led Percivale back to the King,
and Arthur and his knights welcomed him as
one of the best among them all.  Then they all
went back to Camelot together, and as soon as
they were there King Arthur made Percivale
a knight.  And he said to him, when he had
touched his shoulders with his sword: 'Rise,
Sir Percivale, and may God make you a good
knight.  I know that He will, Sir Percivale, for
no young man who has ever come to my court
has done so soon such noble things as you have
done.  For before you were a knight at all you
fought many battles for right and justice, and
you are worthy to be called God's own knight.
And you are worthy, too, to be a knight of the
Round Table.  Kneel again, Sir Percivale, and
take the oath of the Round Table.'

"Then Percivale knelt before the King again
and the King said to him: 'Do you swear that
you will help the King to guard his people and
to keep peace and justice in his land; that you
will be faithful to your fellows; that you will do
right to poor and rich alike?  Do you swear
that in all things you will be true and loyal to
God and to the King?'

"And Percivale answered: 'I swear it.'

"The King took Percivale's hand and turned
toward the Round Table.  All the knights
looked eagerly to see where his place would be,
for they thought: 'No man of us has ever done
such deeds as his while he was still so young,
and who knows but he may be that best knight
of all the world, who is to sit in the Siege
Perilous?'

"The King thought of that too, and he paused
beside the Siege Perilous, to see if there were
any letters in it, but there were not.  But in the
next seat to it, where no one had ever sat since
Arthur had been King, he saw new letters of
gold, and the letters said: 'This is the seat of
Percivale, God's knight.'"





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.. _`THE QUEEN'S ROBING-ROOM`:

.. _`The Tower of London`:

.. figure:: images/img-076.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The Tower of London

   The Tower of London

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.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE QUEEN'S ROBING-ROOM

.. vspace:: 2

When we got back to the hotel at Glastonbury
that night there was a surprise awaiting
us.  Helen's mother had a letter and she said:
"We are going to London by the first train
to-morrow morning, and then we are going
straight to Paris."

Now you must know that before we started on
this journey Helen's mother had said that she
did not care in the least where we went, except
that we must go to Paris.  So it was agreed
between us that she should be allowed to go
to Paris just whenever she pleased and that
I should arrange everything else just as I
pleased.  And so, when she said that we were
going to Paris at once, she made exactly the
one announcement that she had a perfect right
to make, without asking me anything about
it at all.  Still, just at first, I was not at all
pleased.

I said that of course we should do just as she
liked about it, still we had thought that we
were to have plenty of time in Glastonbury, and
so we had not gone to see the ruins of the
abbey yet, and it seemed a pity to have to leave
Glastonbury without seeing them.  Helen knew
nothing about the ruins of the abbey, but she
agreed with me.  That made no difference to
Helen's mother.  She had a letter from
somebody whom she knew, who was in Paris.  That
somebody was to be there only for a week, and
she must be there at the same time.  We really
had no right to object, and so I gave up objecting
and tried to think of the best way out of it.
"Couldn't we come back here again afterwards?"
Helen suggested.

Now the notion of going to a little place like
Glastonbury, so far off the usual lines of travel,
twice in the same journey, is one that would
never come into the head of any ordinary
traveller.  But Helen is not an ordinary traveller.
And when I came to think of it I could not see
the slightest reason in the world why we should
not come back to Glastonbury after we had
been to Paris.  I looked at Helen's mother and
said: "May we?"

"You know very well," she said, "that you
can go and come wherever you like, as long as
you let me go to Paris."

Here was another notion.  "As long as I let
you go to Paris," I repeated.  "That is just
what I will do.  What do you want of me in
Paris?  All the time that you are there you
women will be running about the city, seeing
things that I don't care about and doing things
that I don't care about, such as shopping, and I
should only be in the way.  You would get on
better without me, and so why should I go to
Paris at all?  I will go to London with you
to-morrow, and then I will wait there for you till
you come back."

Helen's mother liked my plan so much that I
almost felt hurt.  "I don't see," she said, "how
you could be of the least use in Paris.  You
will have a much better time in London, and I
shall have you off my mind, and can do just
what I like."

This almost took my breath away, but, as
the plan was my own, of course I had to
pretend that I liked it.  I said that there were
several things in London that I wanted to
see again, and I wanted to look up two or
three places not far from London that had
stories about them.  I was afraid I should
not have time to go to them if I went to Paris
too.  When I said that Helen began to take
an interest, as I had thought that perhaps she
might.  "Are there more stories in London?"
she asked.

"If you and I," I said, "were to stay in
London and find a story every day, we should not
live long enough to find half of them."

"Oh!" said Helen.

"Now do you think?" I said, "when you
come to think of it a second time, that you
really need Helen in Paris any more than you
do me?  When she is a little older she will
want to go there just as much as you do now,
and then she can go.  But now, don't you think
that you should like to have her off your mind
as well as me, and don't you think that she
could do a good deal toward cheering me up
there in London, while you are gone?"

Helen looked at her mother to see what she
was going to say.  She said nothing at all, but
she looked at Helen in a way that meant that
she might do just as she pleased about it, and
Helen said: "If you don't mind very much, I
think I will stay in London."

Helen's mother did not mind very much, so
I said: "Very well, then; this is what we will
do.  We will go all the way to Dover with
you, and then we will come back to London
and have as good a time as we can, till you
come back from having the best time that ever
was in the world, in Paris.  And when you are
with us again we will come back here to
Glastonbury and go to some other good places."

Nobody could make the least objection to
that.  And so the next day but one Helen and
I found that we were left quite to ourselves in
London.  We found plenty of things to amuse
us.  We went to see the Tower of London, as
Americans do.  We found the old armor and
weapons that were there most interesting, and
Helen made a discovery.  "Did King Arthur's
knights wear armors like those?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "about like those."

"With all those chains and iron things?"

"Yes, to be sure."

"Then I know what became of the green
lace girdles that Gawain and the rest of them had."

"Very well; what did become of them?"

"Why, don't you see?  They all wore out.
They wouldn't last a week, if they put them
round their waists, with all those iron things on."

There was really no need of any better
explanation than this, and so I gave up ever
finding any.

"There is one curious little thing about this
Tower," I said, "that is not in most of the
books about it.  It was here, you know, long
before King Arthur's time.  One of the old kings
was called Bran the Blessed.  And once he told
his men that when he was dead they must cut
off his head and bury it under the White Tower,
in London, with the face toward France, and
that as long as it stayed there England could
never be harmed by any foe from abroad.
Now I have never heard of any White Tower
in London, except this big square one in the
middle of the Tower of London, so that I have no
doubt that it was here that the head of Bran
the Blessed was buried, with the face toward
France, to guard England from her foreign
foes.  But when Arthur came to be King he
had the head dug up, for he said that it would
be better for England to be guarded by the
strength and the courage of Englishmen than
by magic.  You can look around you at the
England of to-day and judge for yourself
whether Arthur was right."

I had heard that there were pictures of some
of the King Arthur stories in the Queen's
robing-room, at the Palace of Westminster, and of
course we wanted to see them.  Now anybody
who looks moderately respectable can walk
through the Palace of Westminster any
Saturday.  The trouble is that the policemen who
are posted in the rooms will not let you stay
in any one of them long enough to do more
than take a glance at it and pass on to the
next room.  Of course this would not do for
us, when there were pictures of King Arthur
to be looked at.  But we were very lucky.  We
knew somebody who knew somebody who
knew somebody else, and I rather think that
this last somebody was the secretary of the
Lord Great Chamberlain.  At any rate, there
were some letters written about us, and we
were told to go to the Palace of Westminster
and ask for the inspector of police.  So we went
there when Saturday came around and saw the
inspector and told him that we were the ones
whom the letters had been written about.  He
was very glad to see us and he introduced us
to somebody else.  Once more I think that
it was the secretary of the Lord Great
Chamberlain, but I am not sure.  Whoever he was,
he was most polite, and when we told him what
friends of King Arthur's we were he ordered
the policemen on duty to let us stay in the
Queen's robing-room as long as we liked.

Having all the time we wanted, we did not
hurry, but stood for a few minutes at the
windows, looking out across the Thames.  "It was
somewhere over there," I said, "not very far on
the other side of the river, that there used to
live one of the wickedest knights that were ever
in King Arthur's court.  His name was
Meliagraunce.  I don't know what made him so
wicked, but I suppose he was so to start with.
It occurred to him once that there could be no
better way for him to make trouble than by
stealing the Queen and carrying her off to his
castle, over there across the Thames.  King
Arthur was holding his court just here at
Westminster then, for it seems that there was a
palace here as long ago as that.

"Meliagraunce had to watch a long time for
his chance, for there were usually a good many
people about the Queen, and Lancelot was
likely to be among them, and somehow, wicked
as he was, he did not care about doing
anything to harm the Queen while Lancelot was
with her.  But one day he heard that the Queen
was going maying, with some knights and
ladies, and that Lancelot was not going.  That,
he thought, would be just his chance.  Now,
as the Queen did not mean to go far from
Westminster, there was no thought of any
danger.  So the knights who rode with her wore
swords at their sides, as they did almost
everywhere, but they carried no spears or shields,
and they wore no armor.  There were only ten
of them, with ten ladies and a few squires and
pages.  But Meliagraunce got ready twenty
knights, fully armed, and a hundred archers on
foot.

"Westminster and the country about it looked
very different then from what they do now.
Now there is nothing but city for miles around,
but then there were fields, and a little farther
off there were woods.  So the Queen and her
knights and ladies rode to the woods and
gathered flowers and green branches, and decked
themselves and their horses with them and
started back toward Westminster.  Then
Meliagraunce and his armed men fell upon them.
The Queen's knights fought for her as well as
they could, but they were so few and so poorly
armed that they were no match for their
enemies.  In a little while they were all of them
wounded, and the Queen saw that they would
all be killed if the fight went on.  So she called to
Meliagraunce and begged him to stop the fight
and promised that she would go with him to
his castle, if he would let all her knights go too,
for they were wounded and she must have
them with her, so that she could take care of them.

"Meliagraunce agreed to this and they all
set off toward his castle.  But on the way the
Queen whispered to a page who was on a swift
horse, and told him to ride back to Westminster
and tell Lancelot that she was a prisoner in the
castle of Meliagraunce.  So the page watched
till nobody was looking, and then turned his
horse suddenly and rode back.  Of course
Meliagraunce and his men saw in a moment what he
was doing and what it was for, and they shot
at him with arrows, but they missed him and
he was soon beyond their reach.

"Now Meliagraunce and all those who were
with him had to go slowly, because of the
wounded knights, but the page who went to tell
Lancelot rode fast.  And when Lancelot heard
what the page had to tell he rode fast too, so
that he came to the castle of Meliagraunce not
long after the others arrived there.  And as soon
as Meliagraunce heard that Lancelot had come
he began to see what a silly thing he had done
and to wish that he were well out of it.  So he
went to the Queen and begged her not to let
Lancelot kill him.  If she would promise that,
he said, they would all go back to Westminster
the next morning.  So the Queen sent for
Lancelot and told him that it would be better to do
as Meliagraunce had said, for Meliagraunce was
a knight of King Arthur's and it would be better
that it should not be known what he had done
as it would have to be if Lancelot fought with
him and killed him.  And of course Lancelot
said that it should be as the Queen wished.

"But Meliagraunce had still other mischief
in his mind.  Now that he had found that he
must send the Queen back to Westminster, he
decided that he would charge her with treason
to the King.  That was as easy a charge to make
against her as any, and it was as easy a way to
harm her as any, since that was what he wanted
to do.  You know anybody could charge anybody
else with anything, as long as he was
ready to fight and risk his life to prove it.  of
course it did not take a minute for Lancelot to
say that the charge that Meliagraunce made
was a lie and that he would fight with him to
prove that the Queen was not a traitor to the
King, whenever and wherever Meliagraunce
liked.  And Meliagraunce said that it should be
eight days from that day, at Westminster,
before King Arthur.

"Now you may be sure that Meliagraunce
would never have said a word against the Queen
if he had thought that he should really have to
fight with Lancelot about it.  But he had still
another trick to play, which he thought was a
good one.  He pretended to be very friendly
with Lancelot and asked him if he should like
to see his castle.  Then he led him about from
room to room and at last he led him over a trap
door.  It gave way and Lancelot fell down into
a dungeon and struck on a heap of straw.  And
there Meliagraunce meant to keep him till after
the time for the fight.  And so, as he expected,
it would all be decided his way, because Lancelot
would not be there to defend the Queen, or,
at the worst, he would have to fight with some
knight who was not so good as Lancelot.

"I suppose I ought to tell you just here that
King Arthur himself could not fight for the
Queen in such a case as this, because he had to
sit and be the judge in all such fights.  And
Arthur always did justice to rich and poor and
to great and small alike, and he would do the
same justice, or he would try to, to the one
whom he loved best of all the world as to the
meanest man or woman who could be brought
before him.

"When the rest were ready to go back to
Westminster they were surprised, of course, that
Lancelot was not with them.  But they did not
think that it was so very strange, for Lancelot
often went away suddenly in search of
adventures and told nobody that he was going.  So
they went back and told the King that
Meliagraunce had charged the Queen with treason
and that Lancelot was to defend her.  And the
King was not alarmed at all, for he knew that
the Queen could not be guilty of such a thing,
and he felt sure that Lancelot would be at hand
when the time came to prove it.

"But the King felt more sure of Lancelot
than Lancelot felt of himself, for all that week
he was in prison.  And on the eighth day
Meliagraunce came to Westminster ready for the
fight and called upon the King to give judgment
against the Queen, because Lancelot was not
there to defend her.  Then Arthur said that he
was sure that Lancelot must be dead or sick or
else in prison, for he never failed to keep his
promise before, and he asked if there was any
other knight who would fight in his place to
defend the Queen.  Then a knight of the Round
Table said that he was sure, too, that it was as
the King had said and he would fight for the
Queen instead of Lancelot.

"But Meliagraunce, as clever people
sometimes do, had made a mistake.  He did not
know, perhaps, that there was a woman in his
castle who was in love with Lancelot.  But
there were a good many such women scattered
over England and he ought to have been careful
about it.  On the very morning when the battle
was to be she came to Lancelot and told him
that she would let him out of his prison if he
would give her one kiss.  Lancelot thought that
this was not a large price to pay and he paid it.
Then the woman let him out and found his
armor for him and helped him to get a horse
from the stable and he set off, as fast as he could
go, for Westminster.  And he arrived just as
the knight who had promised to fight for him
had taken his place ready to begin the battle.

"Lancelot rode straight up before the King
and told him how Meliagraunce had trapped him
and kept him in prison, and then he took the
place of the other knight and was ready for the
fight.  Nobody had any doubt how the fight
would go.  Everybody felt that the right would
win and that the right meant Lancelot.  The
King felt so sure of it that he had the Queen
come and sit in her place beside him, though
she was accused of treason.  The heralds gave
the signal, the knights charged together, and
Meliagraunce was thrown from his horse.
Lancelot dismounted then and they fought with
swords, but it was only a few moments before
Meliagraunce was disarmed and helpless and
begging for mercy.

"Then Lancelot had a hard question to
decide.  In any ordinary fight it would be
unknightly to refuse mercy to any knight who
asked it, but Lancelot felt that such a
cowardly, lying wretch as this had no right to live
and that he had no right to let him live.  He
thought for a moment and then he said:
'Meliagraunce, take up your sword and let us go on
with this fight to the end.'

"'I will not fight any more,' said Meliagraunce;
'you have beaten me and I ask your
mercy, and you must give it, as you are a knight
of the Round Table.'

"'Meliagraunce,' said Lancelot, 'I will take
off my helmet and all the armor that I can from
the left side of my body, and my left hand shall
be tied behind me, and then I will fight with you.'

"Then Meliagraunce ran toward the King.
'My lord,' he cried, 'have you heard what he
has said?  I call upon you to make him keep
his promise and fight me with his head and his
left side uncovered.'

"'Meliagraunce,' said Lancelot, 'come back!
I am not a liar, like you, and I need no one to
make me keep my promises, even to traitors and
cowards.'

"Then Lancelot's armor was taken off his
left side, as much of it as could be, and his
helmet was taken off.  And his left hand was tied
behind him, so that he could not use his shield.
And in this way he stood ready for the fight
again.  Meliagraunce aimed a blow at his head,
but Lancelot caught it with his sword and put
it aside.  Then he struck one great stroke and
split Meliagraunce's helmet and laid him dead
on the field.  And everybody felt that the
Round Table was better by the loss of
Meliagraunce than it would be by the gain of three
good knights.  And now I think that it is
about time for us to look at these pictures that
we came to see."

The pictures were painted on the walls of
two sides of the room.  On the third side was
a throne, with a canopy over it, and on the
fourth side were the windows.  The artist had
painted scenes from the stories of King Arthur
and he had made them represent the virtues
that he thought ought to belong to a good
knight.  One of his pictures he called "Mercy,"
and it showed Sir Gawain kneeling before
Queen Guinevere and swearing always to be
merciful and never to be against ladies.  The
one next to this was "Hospitality," and in it
King Arthur was receiving Sir Tristram as a
knight of the Round Table.  Another picture
was "Courtesy," and there Tristram was
playing his harp to Isolt.  For "Religion" there
was "The Vision of Sir Galahad and his
Company."  Then there was one of "Generosity,"
with King Arthur thrown from his horse in
battle and his life spared by Lancelot.  "That
seems a strange picture to you, no doubt," I
said, "but some time I will tell you the story
that it belongs to, and then it will not seem so
strange."

All around under these pictures and on the
side of the room where the throne was, there
were carvings: "Arthur Delivered unto
Merlin," "Arthur Crowned King," "How Arthur
Gate His Sword Excalibur," "King Arthur
Wedded to Guinevere," and many more.

"But of all these pictures," I said, "the one
that reminds me of a story that I want to tell
you just now is this one of 'The Admission of
Sir Tristram to the Fellowship of the Round
Table.'  Tristram had been known as the best
knight of the world, next to Lancelot, for a
long time before he was a knight of the Round
Table.  King Arthur had long wished that
Tristram might be one of his knights, and
Lancelot had heard so much about him that he
wanted to know him and to be his friend.  So
at last Lancelot and some of the other knights
set out to hunt for Tristram and to try to bring
him to the court.

"You remember that Tristram was in love
with Isolt, the Princess of Ireland.  There was
another knight, Sir Palamides, who was in love
with her too.  I must tell you about this
Palamides, for there never was a knight who
belonged more to that dear, silly old time or fitted
into it better than he did.  He was a good and
strong and brave knight, but Isolt did not care
two straws for him and never would, and he
knew it.  But do you suppose that made any
difference to him?  Not a bit.  He made it half
of his business to love her year after year,
though he knew that it would never do him or
anybody else any good.  It never came into his
head that there were just as good fish in the
sea as ever came out of it.  No, all he cared for
was to sit on the shore of the sea, never trying
to catch or even thinking of any other good fish,
but only wishing and wishing that he might
catch the one that he knew he never could.  It
was just like a good knight of those days.

"I said that he made it half of his business
to love Isolt.  The other half of his business
was to hunt the questing beast.  It was called
the questing beast because of the questing or
barking noise that came out of it.  It was a
wonderful animal altogether.  It had a body
like a leopard in front and like a lion behind,
but its head was like a serpent's and its feet
were like those of a deer.  And it did not make
this barking noise with its mouth, but the noise
was inside the beast, and it was not like the
barking of one dog, but of sixty dogs.  I don't
know why Palamides hunted it or what he was
going to do with it if he ever caught it, but this
again was just like a knight of those days.

"Now Palamides used often to feel very
unfriendly toward Tristram, because Tristram
loved Isolt.  By nature I believe that he was a
good fellow, but he was hot-tempered, and, like
other hot-tempered people, he sometimes did
things that he was afterward sorry for.  And
so, when he met Tristram, he often felt angry
and wanted to fight with him.  And Tristram
beat him usually, but not always, for
Palamides was such a good knight that he could
give Tristram, or even Lancelot, a pretty hard
battle.  Then Palamides would be Tristram's
friend for awhile, and then he would think
more about Isolt and would grow to be his
enemy again, and so would be ready for
another fight.

"And once Tristram and Palamides had set
a time and a place to fight together and settle
everything between them.  But when the day
came Palamides was held in prison by some
enemy and could not come.  But Tristram was
at the place, and as he waited he saw a knight
riding toward him, with a closed helmet and a
covered shield.  Of course he thought that this
was Palamides, ready for the fight, so he put
his spear in rest and faced him, and the other
knight, seeing him do that, got ready to defend
himself.  Now this other knight was Lancelot,
and when the two had been fighting for a few
minutes each began to wonder who the other
could be.  Tristram knew very well that he was
fighting with a better knight than Palamides,
and Lancelot knew that he had never fought
with so good a knight before.

"And after a long time it came into their
heads to stop fighting for a moment and ask
each other who they were.  And when each
had told the other his name they saw what a
mistake they had made in fighting at all.  It
was then that Lancelot made Tristram come to
the court with him, and it was then that King
Arthur welcomed him and gave him his seat at
the Round Table, as the picture shows.

"And now, after all this bother, we have
come to the story.  Tristram had not been long
a knight of the Round Table when King
Arthur made a great tournament in his honor.  It
was at the Castle of Lonazep.  I don't know
just where that was, but it was somewhere up
in the other end of England.  As Tristram was
on his way to the tournament he met
Palamides, and they fought, as usual.  And
Tristram won, as usual, and then Palamides begged
him to let him ride to the tournament with him
and fight for him and do him service.

"So they rode together till they came to the
River Humber, and there they saw a boat, all
covered with canopies of purple silk, coming up
the stream.  It came to the shore close to them
and lay there still.  Then Tristram and
Palamides went down into the boat and saw a strange
sight.  In the middle of it was a couch, all
covered with silk and cloth of gold, and on the couch
lay a dead knight, armed all but his head.  As
Tristram stood gazing and wondering at this he
saw that there was a letter in the dead knight's
hand.  He took the letter and opened and read
it, and this is what it said: 'To the knights of
King Arthur: I who bring this letter was
Hermance, King of the Red City.  I was killed by
two traitors, for my lands and my crown.  Now
I pray that some one of King Arthur's knights
will avenge my death and will take my city and
my castles and my crown for his reward.'

"Then Palamides said: 'Sir Tristram, you
must be at this tournament, for King Arthur
has made it in your honor, and he and many
others will wish to see you here.  So let me
go to avenge the death of this King, and
whatever I do shall be done for you and in
your name.'

"'You are right,' said Tristram, 'and you
may go, but come back, if you can, for the tournament.'

"'If I live,' said Palamides, 'and the work that
I find to do will let me, I will be with you again
at the tournament.'

"Then Tristram went ashore from the boat
and Palamides stayed in it, and the men turned
the boat and it went away down the river.  The
men in the boat knew why Palamides stayed in
it.  He did not speak to them and they did not
speak to him.  He knew that they would take
him where he ought to go, so he stood at the
prow and watched the fields that they passed
and the woods and the river, and waited to see
and to know who these traitors were whom he
must punish and what sort of task it was to
be to avenge this dead King.  And after a time
the boat came to where the river widened out
toward the sea, and the men steered it toward a
castle that stood on the shore.  Then they gave
Palamides a horn and told him to blow it.  And
the people of the castle knew the sound of the
horn, and when they heard it they came down
to where the boat had landed and welcomed
Palamides and led him up into the hall.  There
the lord of the castle met him and made him sit
at the table and they brought him food and wine.
And Palamides saw that the lord of the castle
and all the others in it were dressed in black, and
after he had eaten and drunk he asked why this was.

"'It is for the death of our King,' the lord of
the castle answered.  'He was Hermance, the
King of the Red City, and no truer king ever
lived.  He had two foster sons, whom he had
brought up since they were children.  He loved
them as if they had been his own sons, but they
were false and wicked.  He meant when he died
to give them everything he had, but they could
not wait.  So they watched their chance, and
one day, when he had been hunting and had
stopped to drink at a spring, they came behind
him and stabbed him in the back.  There,
beside the spring, I found him, not yet dead.  He
made me put him in a boat and he made me write
a letter and put it in his hand before he died.
The boatmen were told to go up the Humber
toward Lonazep, where all King Arthur's
knights were soon to be, and the letter asked
that some one of them would come to avenge the
death of our good King.  And you, Sir Knight—since
you have come in this boat—I suppose
that you have read this letter and have come to
help us.'

"'One of the best knights of the world, Sir
Tristram, read that letter,' Palamides said, 'and
I have come for him and in his name to avenge
the death of your King.  So tell me where I shall
find these men.'

"'You must take your boat again,' said the
lord, 'and go to the Delectable Isle.  There is
the Red City, and there you will find these two
brothers, Helius and Helake.  Go and conquer
them and we shall pray for you and wait to hear
what you have done.'

"Then Palamides went back to his boat, and
just as he came to it he met a knight who said:
'Sir Knight, tell me who you are and where you
are going.'

"'By what right,' said Palamides, 'do you
command me so?'

"'If you are going to the Red City,' said the
knight, 'to avenge the death of King Hermance,
turn back and go no farther.  It is for me, not
for you, to avenge him.  I am the brother of
King Hermance.'

"'That may be true,' Palamides answered,
'but when the letter was taken out of the dead
King's hand we did not know that there was any
knight to avenge him.  I promised then that I
would do it, and I must do it now or I shall be
false to my promise.'

"'That is true,' said the other knight, 'but now
let us try a few strokes together, to see which of
us is the better knight, and then that one shall
avenge the King my brother.'

"So they drew their swords and struck a few
strokes, and then the brother of the King said:
'You are the better; the adventure is yours.
But I will go to the Red City too, so that I can
fight with these traitors if they kill you.

"'Come with me, then,' said Palamides, 'but
if they kill me go to my lord, Sir Tristram, and
tell him of it, and I am sure that he or Sir
Lancelot will come to avenge me and the King
your brother.'

"So they both went on in the boat till they
came to the Delectable Isle and the Red City.
And there all the people welcomed them, for
they all loved their King who was dead and hated
the traitors who had killed him.  And they sent
messengers to the brothers to tell them that
one of King Arthur's knights had come to fight
with them, to avenge King Hermance.  And the
brothers sent back word that they would be
ready for the fight the next morning.

"In the morning Palamides was ready in the
lists and the people of the city came to see the
battle.  And when they saw what a bold and
strong-looking man Palamides was they began
to hope that they should be free of their tyrants
and have another King as good as Hermance.
Then the brothers came and took their places
at the other end of the lists, and when the
people looked at them they began to fear again that
the one knight from King Arthur's court could
never beat them.

"It was Helake who came first against
Palamides, and Palamides ran him through with his
spear at the first charge and he fell dead upon
the field.  But the battle with Helius was not so
easy.  At the first charge Palamides was thrown
from his saddle, and as he lay on the ground,
before he could get up, Helius tried to drive his
horse over him, to crush him.  But Palamides
sprang up and caught the bridle and cried:
'Come down and fight me fairly on foot or I
will kill your horse and make you do it.'

"Then Helius got off his horse and they began
to fight again with their swords.  It was a fight
for life and death, and it was a hard one.  It
lasted for a long time, with no rest, and Helius
seemed never to lose any ground or any strength,
but Palamides grew weaker and fainter and he
was forced back and back across the field.  The
people saw it and a low, sad murmur ran through
the crowd.  And Palamides heard it, and for an
instant he glanced away from his enemy and saw
the anxious faces of the people and the tears in
the eyes of some and the fear in the looks of
many.  Then he said to himself: 'Palamides,
you are a knight of the Round Table.  Will you
let the news go back to King Arthur that you
were beaten in a fight by a traitor and a
murderer?  And you are here for Tristram.  Will
you lose his battle for him?'

"And with that thought he gathered all his
strength and struck Helius three great blows
with his sword, one upon the other, and with the
third he cut through his helmet and laid him
dead upon the field with his brother.

"Then a great shout went up from all the
people and some of them ran away to tell those
who had not seen the fight how it had gone, and
they built bonfires and set all the bells of the
city ringing, and others crowded around the
knight and cheered and shouted: 'Long live
King Palamides!'

"But when they would let him speak to them
Palamides said: 'You must not call me so; all
that I have done was for my lord, Sir Tristram.
If he could have come he would have fought
this battle better than I.  If you have any new
king it is he, and now I must go back to him.
But I leave here this good knight, the brother
of your old King Hermance, and he shall rule
you till Sir Tristram sends to tell you what else
to do.'

"Then Palamides went on board his boat
again and it took him away toward the Humber
and toward Lonazep to find Sir Tristram."





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.. _`"CAMELOT, THAT IS IN ENGLISH WINCHESTER"`:

.. _`The Round Table at Winchester`:

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   :align: center
   :alt: The Round Table at Winchester

   The Round Table at Winchester

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.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   "CAMELOT, THAT IS IN ENGLISH WINCHESTER"

.. vspace:: 2

Even while we were at Camelford, and again
while we were at Cadbury Castle, I had not
forgotten the words of my favorite book,
"Camelot, that is in English Winchester."  If
we were talking about hard history, I suppose
that I should have to say that, if there ever was
a real Camelot at all, it was probably that
pleasant hill-top that we had seen in Somerset.
Yet, when a story-teller whom I love as much
as I do good old Sir Thomas says that
Winchester was Camelot, it shall be Camelot for
me, at least while I am there.  So we went
down from London to see if this third Camelot
pleased us as much as the two that we had seen.

First we walked about the streets and aimed
at nothing in particular.  That is a good thing
to do on the first day when you are in a strange
city.  "If I were to try to tell you," I said,
"all the interesting and useful and delightful
things that there are to tell about Winchester,
I should have to go first and learn the most of
them for myself.  And then you would get
tired of listening to them, for there would be
enough of them to make a book as big as a
dictionary.  We are supposing, you know,
while we stay, that King Arthur lived here,
and, whether he did or not, other kings of
England lived here more or less for I don't know
how many hundred years.  King Alfred lived
here and King Canute lived here and William
the Conqueror built a castle here, on the very
spot, we will let ourselves believe, where King
Arthur's castle stood."

If the first thing to be done in a town newly
visited is to walk about the streets, the second
is to go to the cathedral, if there is one.  So
the next thing that we did was to go to
Winchester Cathedral.  It is not much to look at
from the outside, though it is pretty enough,
with the trees and grass around it.  It has only
the lowest of towers.  It had a higher one once,
but when King William Rufus was killed,
they buried him in the cathedral and seven
years afterward the tower fell down.  They
thought that it must be because they had buried
such a wicked man in the church.  But I think
that there are kings as bad as William Rufus
buried under some English towers that have
not fallen down.  There are kings and kings,
good and bad, lying here in this cathedral.
Canute is here, and it was here that he brought
his crown and put it up over the cross, after he
had found, down yonder at Southampton, that
he could not rule the waves, as England has
since been supposed to do.  To be fair to the
cathedral, I ought to say that, though it is
unpromising outside, it is surely very beautiful
inside.  After that I think I do not need to
say anything more about it at all, because there
are so many people who can tell you about this
cathedral and others so much better than I can.

We left it and walked up the street to find
the castle.  I think I forgot to say at the
proper place that the whole town of
Winchester that day was in a state of breathless
excitement about a cricket match.  The boys
of Winchester College were playing against
the boys from Eton, and pretty nearly
everybody in town had gone to see the game.
When we got to the castle, the man who ought
to have been there to show it to us had gone
to see the cricket match, like the rest.  But his
wife, who was a very pleasant elderly lady,
said that she would show it to us.

They hold court in the castle still.  Not the
sort of court that King Arthur used to hold,
but courts of justice for the County of Hants.
The old woman took us into one room after
another and told us about the trials that had
taken place in them.  We pretended to be
greatly interested, but we were not a bit.  But
by and by she took us to a place where we
were interested.  It was the great hall of the
castle.  I should feel sorry for anybody who
was not interested in the great hall of
Winchester Castle.  It belonged to the old castle
that William the Conqueror built, where more
kings and queens lived or were born or died
or did other fascinating things than I should
dare to try to remember.  And this was the
hall of Parliament for almost four hundred
years.  "And we may as well believe," I said,
"that now we are standing in King Arthur's
hall.  If Winchester was Camelot there is no
reason to suppose that his castle was not on
this very spot, and there is no reason to
suppose, either, that the great hall was not on this
very spot.  Henry VII. believed it, when his
son was born here and he named him Arthur."

It is a beautiful room as it stands to-day.  It
is long and wide and high.  It has fine arches
and cluster columns and windows of stained
glass.  But what we gazed at most hung high
up on the wall at the west end of the hall.  The
old woman told us that it was King Arthur's
Round Table.  Well, there was no doubt that
it was round, and she said that there was no
doubt that it had been a table once, because
there were places at the back of it to fasten
legs.  We found a picture of the back of it
afterwards in a book about Winchester, and it
showed that she was right.  The table is eighteen
feet across, if you insist on my being exact.
The table is painted in quite an elaborate
style.  There is a big rose in the middle of it,
and then there is a border, and in the border
are the words: "This is the round table of
King Arthur and his twenty-four Knights."  This
did not make us believe in the table any
the more, because we knew very well that
twenty-four knights would not make any show
at all in King Arthur's hall.  Above the rose,
as the table hangs now, and with his feet
resting on it, is a picture of King Arthur himself.
The rest of the table, except the outer edge,
is painted with broad stripes of dark and light,
which run from the border around the rose to
the larger border of the whole table.  The old
woman asked us to notice that the names of
the knights were around the edge of the table.

We tried to make out the names and we did
make out some of them.  There were Lancelot
and Lionel and Tristram and Gareth and
Bedivere and Palamides and Bors and Kay and
Mordred and others that we could not read.
The old woman said that there were some of
them that nobody had ever been able to read,
and we were not so proud as to try to read
what we were told that nobody could.  It was
King Henry VIII. who had this table painted
in such a gorgeous way, and it seemed to us
that the picture of King Arthur did not look
quite unlike Henry.  No, we could not quite
believe in the table after all.  King Arthur's
Round Table had places, as we knew, for a
hundred and fifty knights, and this had places for
only twenty-four.  Still we could not help
being uncommonly interested in anything that
had even been called King Arthur's Round
Table for four hundred years at the very least,
and probably for six hundred.

"You see," said the old woman, "the three
pictures on the windows over the Round
Table are King Arthur and King Alfred and
King Canute, a Briton and a Saxon and a Dane."

We looked up at the three kings on the
stained glass windows, and it was then that I
made a dreadful mistake.  It came into my
mind that it would be a good plan to show off
to this good lady who had so kindly shown us
the hall, how much we knew about these three
kings.  Pride does sometimes go before a fall.
"Helen," I said, "tell this lady something
about King Arthur, just to show her how much
we have learned."

"I don't want to tell about him," Helen
answered, "I would rather you would tell a story
about him."

"But I am not going to tell any story now,"
I said, "I want you to tell one—any one you
like, just to show that you can do it."

"But I don't want to show that I can do it."

"Helen, if you do not tell us something about
King Arthur at once, I will not tell you another
story for a week."

And then what did this horrible child do
but stand there and recite:

   |  "When good King Arthur ruled this land
   |    He was a goodly King;
   |  He stole three pecks of barley meal
   |    To make a bag-pudding.
   |  A bag-pudding the king did make,
   |    And stuffed it well with plums;
   |  And in it put great lumps of fat,
   |    As big as my two thumbs.
   |  The King and Queen did eat thereof,
   |    And noblemen beside;
   |  And what they could not eat that night,
   |    The Queen next morning fried."


I tried to look as sorrowful as I could.
"You know very well," I said, "that that is
not true at all.  That was written by some
enemy of King Arthur.  There are plenty of
good things that you know and might have
told us; and so, to punish you for telling that,
you shall tell us now about King Canute and
his courtiers."

Now Helen did not like this any more than
she liked telling about King Arthur, but she
must have seen how very determined I looked,
and she gave a little gasp and said: "King
Canute's courtiers told him that he was the
greatest King in the world, and that the sea
would obey him if he told it to do anything.
So he had his chair put on the sand and he
ordered the tide not to come up and wet him,
and it did come up and wet him.  And he told
his courtiers not to flatter him any more, and
he never smiled again."

"You get worse every minute," I said.
"You know very well that it was not Canute
who never smiled again, and for telling that
story wrong you shall tell us now about King
Alfred and the cakes."

By this time Helen saw that it was getting
serious and that it would not do any good to
make any more mistakes, so she said: "King
Alfred was hiding from his enemies, and he
was in the house of a cowherd.  And the
cowherd's wife was baking some cakes, and King
Alfred was sitting by the fire.  And the cakes
burned and he was so busy mending his bows
and arrows that he didn't know it, so the
cowherd's wife said: 'Can't you look at the cakes
and not let them burn?  You'll be ready to eat
them fast enough when the time comes.'  And
she didn't know that he was the King."

"I can't say," I said, "that you have told
that quite as well as you might, but it will do.
And now, who was it that never smiled again?

"Henry I."

"And why?"

"Because his son William was drowned when
the White Ship was lost."

"Very well.  The first class in English history
could sit down, if there was anything to
sit on."

The old woman was quite speechless with
astonishment by this time.  I don't suppose
anybody had ever come into this hall and tried to
tell her so many things about the kings who
used to live in Winchester before.  We thanked
her for her trouble and said good-by, and she
just managed to get back enough of her senses
to say that we were welcome and to bid us
good-by in turn.  "And now," I said, "suppose
we do what everybody else in town is doing
and go and see the cricket match."





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.. _`THE BOAT ON THE RIVER`:

.. _`Winchester Cathedral`:

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   :alt: Winchester Cathedral

   Winchester Cathedral

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   CHAPTER VI


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   THE BOAT ON THE RIVER

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Neither Helen nor I knew enough about
cricket to tell a wicket-keeper from a maiden
over.  But, whether we understood what was
going on or not, the Winchester cricket-field
that day was a pretty sight.  The grass all over
it was fresh and green, and around it were
crowds of gayly dressed people, watching the
game and talking and laughing and enjoying
the warm, soft air and the bright sunshine.  For
a little while we walked around the edge of the
field and looked at the people and the boys who
were playing, running about and doing such
absurd things as the players of a game you do
not understand always do.  Then we found a
quiet place across the field from where the most
of the people were, and there we sat down on
the grass to rest and to try to make something
out of the game.  But that was hopeless,
and we soon gave it up.

"Just suppose," I said, "that instead of these
boys, with their harmless bats and balls and
wickets, this field was filled with armored
knights on horses, with long spears and great
swords.  Suppose that they were playing their
own rough game of the tournament, charging
together and throwing one another off their
horses and not caring any too much, sometimes,
whether they killed one another or not.
Suppose that the people from the town had all
come out to see the tournament, just as they
have come out to-day to see the game of
cricket, and that we had come, too, just as we
really have.  And suppose that King Arthur
was sitting over there in his high seat to
judge the knights.  If we can suppose all this,
I think that wee shall see pretty clearly how
one of King Arthur's tournaments looked
when Winchester was Camelot.  There is a
story, very pretty and very sad, about a
tournament that was held at this very Camelot,
and for all I know it may have been on this
very field.

"The court was at Westminster just then
but the King had given out that this
tournament was to be at Camelot, so, when the time
came, he and his knights set out to ride here.
The Queen was sick and said that she would not
come with them, and Lancelot said that a wound
that he had was not yet well and so he would
stay behind too and would not fight in this
tournament.  Now, although Lancelot was usually
honest, I am sorry to say that just now he was
saying what was not quite true.  The truth was
that Lancelot wanted to be at the tournament
without King Arthur or any of the knights
knowing that he was there.  He had won in so
many tournaments and all the knights knew so
well that he was sure to win if he fought, that
none of them liked to fight against him, and
tournaments where Lancelot was had come to
be rather one-sided affairs.  So he thought that
he would wait till the others were gone and
then come to Camelot by himself, in armor that
they did not know and carrying some strange
shield, and join in the tournament and fight
with whom he pleased.

"It was early morning when the others went
away.  Lancelot waited till noon, so that he
should not overtake them on the way, and then
he mounted his horse and rode toward Camelot.
Late in the day he came to a place called
Astolat.  There was a castle, and Lancelot thought
it best to stay there for the night.  The lord of
the castle was an old knight, Sir Bernard of
Astolat.  He welcomed Lancelot and asked
him who he was, but Lancelot said: 'If you
will pardon me, I do not wish to tell my name.
I am going to the tournament at Camelot, to
try what I can do against the knights who will
be there, and I do not wish that any of them
shall know who I am.'

"When it was time for supper Lancelot sat
at the table with Sir Bernard and his two sons,
and Sir Bernard's daughter served them.  Her
name was Elaine.  And wherever Elaine went
and whatever she did, she was always looking
at Lancelot.  It seemed to her that there was
something about him that was wonderful and
new.  She thought that she had never seen a
man who looked so noble, and, as he talked
with her father, she thought that she had never
heard a man who spoke so well.  They lived a
quiet life there at Astolat, and this knight was
telling her father about the court and about
battles and tournaments.  He told things that
were strange to her about many of the knights,
and she listened to hear him say something
about himself, but he did not say anything.
'Still,' she thought, 'when I look at him I know
that he is the best of them all.'  And she knew
so little about knights that this was really a very
good guess for her to make.

"But Lancelot scarcely saw Elaine at all.
He knew that she was there, of course, and he
knew that she was young and beautiful, and he
knew that she was serving them, as they sat
there.  But Lancelot had seen many young
girls serving at many tables—yes, and a good
many of them had fallen in love with him, too,
before this one, with or without his knowing it.
And Lancelot asked the old man: 'Have you any
plain shield here that you could lend to me for
this tournament?  I have told you that I do not
want to be known at Camelot, but every knight
would know my shield, if I should carry my
own.'  And when she heard that, Elaine thought:
'He is some famous knight, I knew he was!'

"And the old man answered: 'Here are my
two sons, Torre and Lavaine; they are both
new knights and their shields are plain and
blank.  It may be that Lavaine will like to go
and see this tournament, but Torre cannot go,
for he has a wound that is not well yet.  You
can have his shield.'

"'And may I leave my own shield here,' said
Lancelot, 'till I come back?'

"'Surely,' said the old man, 'Elaine will take
good care of it for you.'

"And when she heard that, Elaine blushed
from her forehead down to her throat, and she
stood still and gazed at Lancelot, and he looked
up at her and said: 'If she will do that for me
I shall be very grateful.'

"Lavaine had been listening to all that
Lancelot said, almost as much as his sister, and now
he said: 'Father, if this knight will let me,
might I not ride with him to the tournament
and see the knights, and perhaps try a joust
with one of them?'

"'No, no," said his father, 'it would trouble
the knight too much to have such a boy with him.'

"'It would not trouble me at all,' said Lancelot;
'let him come.  He shall see everything,
and if he wants to joust I will advise him and
help him all I can.  It would be a poor
return for your kindness to me to do less than
that.'

"Then Elaine, although she scarcely dared
to speak to Lancelot, said: 'Sir Knight, if I am
to keep your shield, could you not wear some
token of mine at the tournament?'

"'My child,' said Lancelot, 'I have never
done that for any lady, and it is against my
rule.'  And then he thought again: 'All my friends
know that I never wear a token of any lady,
and, if I do it now, it will be all the harder for
them to know me.' So he said: 'Very well,
then, I will wear something for you; what is it?'

"And Elaine blushed again with happiness,
and she went away and brought him a sleeve
of red silk, all embroidered over with pearls.
And Lancelot bound it on his helmet.  Then
they all went to bed, and in the morning
Lancelot and Lavaine rode away from Astolat
together and came here to Camelot.  And Elaine
took Lancelot's shield to her own chamber, and
from the tower of the castle she watched Lancelot
and her brother till they were out of sight.

"I don't see why I should tell you about the
tournament.  I have told you about such things
so many times that you know how the knights
fought, and I am sure you do not care to hear
it again.  But I will tell you that Lancelot
came to the tournament and nobody knew him,
that he did better than any other knight there,
that Lavaine did well, too, for so new a knight,
and that Lancelot at last got a dreadful wound.

"Then he called to Lavaine to follow him
and they rode away.  Lancelot could scarcely
sit on his horse, but they rode a little way from
Camelot to a place that Lancelot knew, where
a hermit lived.  The hermit had been a knight
of the Round Table long ago, and when he saw
Lancelot he knew him, and he took him into
his cell and took off his armor and dressed his
wound and did all that he could to help him.
And Lancelot was there with the hermit for a
long time, and Lavaine stayed with him.

"Now when the tournament was over the
King and all the knights wondered what had
become of the knight who had worn the red
sleeve, with the pearls, on his helmet.  He had
done better than any of them and the King
wanted to find him, so that he could give him
the prize.  Some of the knights had seen that
he was wounded, but none of them had seen
which way he went.  Then Gawain said that
he would hunt for him, but he rode all around
Camelot and could not find him, and then he
went back to the King' and told him that he
feared that the knight who wore the red sleeve
was dead.

"So they all went back to Westminster.  And
at night Gawain came to Astolat and to the
castle of old Sir Bernard.  And as soon as he
and his son and his daughter heard that Gawain
had come from the tournament at Camelot, they
asked him to tell them all about it and what
had been done there and who had won the
prize.  'The prize was won,' he said, 'by a
knight whom nobody knew, and he carried a
plain shield and wore a red sleeve, with pearls,
on his helmet.  I never saw a knight joust
better, but he went away before the tournament
was over and afterwards he could not be found.'

"Elaine was trembling with happiness that
her knight had proved the best of them all.
'We know him,' she cried; 'he was here with
us; it was my sleeve that he wore, and he is the
knight that I love.  I knew that he was the best
of knights!'

"'You know him?' said Gawain.  'Then
tell me who he was, so that I may tell the King.'

"Then Elaine told him that she did not know
his name, and she told him all that she did
know about him, how he had come there and
how he had promised to wear her sleeve, and
how he had taken her brother's shield and had
left his own with her.

"'Will you let me see his shield, then?'
Gawain asked.  'I know so many shields that I
might tell who he was by that.'

"So Elaine brought the shield and showed it
to Gawain, and said: 'do you know the knight
by this?'

"'Yes, yes,' said Gawain, 'indeed, indeed, I
know him; I have known him for many years,
and he is the best knight of the world.  He is
Sir Lancelot of the Lake.'

"And when she heard this, Elaine could not
say anything, but could only stand before
Gawain, blushing and trembling again, that the
great Sir Lancelot had worn her token at the
tournament.

"'But I fear,' said Gawain, 'that we must all
be sad for this, for the knight who wore that
red sleeve with the pearls got a dreadful wound,
and now he may be dead or dying.'

"Then Elaine begged her father to let her go
to find Lancelot.  And he saw that she loved
him so much that it would be better for her to
go and try to find him and help him, if he needed
her, than to stay at home and fret about him,
not knowing whether he was alive or dead.
And so Elaine left Astolat to seek for Lancelot.
She went first toward Camelot, and before she
reached the city she met her brother, Lavaine.
He did not see her at first, but she called to
him, and she was in such haste that she would
not wait to tell him how their father was, or
why she had come, but asked him at once where
Sir Lancelot was.

"'How do you know,' he said, 'that he is Sir
Lancelot?'

"'It was Sir Gawain that told us,' she
answered; 'he came to Astolat and saw his shield
and knew it.  Where is he?'

"'In a hermitage, not far from here.'

"'Then he is not dead?'

"'No,' said Lavaine, 'he was wounded and
almost killed, but the hermit is a skilful man
and knows what to do with wounds, and he
hopes that he will live.'

"'Take me to him, then,' said Elaine.

"So Lavaine led her to the hermit's cell.
And when she saw Lancelot lying there, with
his face thin and white, his eyes large and dark,
and all his strength gone from him, she ran to
him and fell upon her knees beside his bed and
hid her face in the pillow, and for a few
moments she could not see or speak or move.
Then she rose and looked at him again and put
her hand on his forehead, and then she went
and spoke to the hermit and at last she came
and sat down beside Lancelot.  And after that
she scarcely left the cell till he was well, and in
all the weary days that passed no one ever saw
her tremble or shed a tear, and she never slept
when Lancelot needed her, but she was always
there to nurse him and care for him and help
the hermit to cure him, and if he ever smiled
at her or called her by her name or reached out
his hand and touched hers she was happy.

"But Gawain had gone back to the court
and had told the King and all the rest that the
knight who wore the red sleeve was Lancelot.
And then Bors had set off to find him too.
And Lancelot knew that Bors would come to
find him and he told Lavaine to watch for him
in the town, and so he was soon brought to the
cell.  And when he and Lancelot had talked
for a little while and Lancelot had asked him
about the King and the Queen and all who
were at court, Bors said: 'Is this girl whom I
see about you the one whom they call Elaine of
Astolat?'

"'Yes,' said Lancelot, 'and I cannot make
her go away.  I tell her that she keeps herself
here too close, but she will not rest or leave me.'

"'Why should she leave you?' said Bors.
'She loves you, they say, and here she proves
it; why can you not love her too?'

"'No,' Lancelot answered, 'I wish that it
could be, but it never can.  I shall be grateful
to her always, she has done so much for me,
and I shall always be her knight, but I can do
no more.'

"'It is for you alone to say,' said Bors, 'but
I am sorry for her and for you too.'

"They had spoken low, but Elaine was near
and she could not help hearing a part of what
they said.  When Bors stole a glance at her he
saw that her face was white, but there were no
tears in her eyes, and when there was anything
for her to do for Lancelot she did it just as
before, and, just as before, she never wanted to
sleep or to be away from him.

"So Lancelot grew slowly stronger, and after
a long time he could sit upon a horse again,
and at last the hermit told him that he needed
no more of his care.  Then it was agreed that
Lancelot and Bors and Elaine and Lavaine
should ride together to Astolat.  There
Lancelot was to rest and get his shield, which was
still there, and then go on with Bors and
Lavaine to Westminster.  So they came to
Astolat and spent the night, and in the morning
Lancelot, Bors, and Lavaine were ready to ride
on their way.  Then Lancelot said to Elaine:
'You have done more for me than I can ever
repay.  I shall never forget you and always and
everywhere that I go I shall be your knight,
and anything that I can ever do for you I will
do gladly.'  And Elaine knew that Lancelot
could never do the one thing that she wished
him to do for her—to love her.

"And after they were gone her father saw
that she grew paler and thinner, day by day.
Her father and her brother Torre tried to
amuse her and cheer her and make her think
less of Lancelot, but she thought of him all day,
and when she slept she dreamed of him.  She
did not sleep much.  Every morning, before
the sun rose, she was up and was looking out
from the tower.  Sometimes she looked away
toward London, where Lancelot was, or where
she thought that he was, and sometimes she
would look away toward Camelot, where she
had been with him.  But at last she could not
get up to look out from her tower any more.
She could not leave her bed, but she lay there
awake all day and much of the night; she
talked with her father or her brother a little,
and for the rest of the time she thought and
dreamed of Lancelot.  And one day she told
her father that she knew that she should live
for only a little while more.  'And now,' she
said, 'you must write a letter, just as I shall
tell you.  And when I am dead, dress me the
best you can and lay me on a couch and put
this letter in my hand.  Then put the couch,
and me upon it, into a boat, and let the boat be
rowed down the river to Westminster, where
Lancelot and the King and the Queen are.'

"All this she made her father promise to
do.  Then she told him what to write for her
in the letter, and a little while after that she
died.  And her father did all that he had
promised.

"One day King Arthur and Queen Guinevere
and Sir Lancelot stood at a window of the
palace at Westminster, looking out upon the
Thames.  And there they saw a little boat, all
covered over with black and purple silk, and
with only one man to row it.  And the boat
came straight on till it touched the shore near
the palace.  'It is a strange-looking boat,' said
the King; 'let us go down and see what it is.'

"So they all went down and looked into the
boat, and there they saw the dead Elaine, lying
on a couch covered with silk and cloth of gold.
Then the Queen saw the letter in her hand and
took it and opened it and saw that it was to
Lancelot.  But when she gave it to him Lancelot
gave it to the King and asked him to read
it.  And the letter said?  'To the best knight of
the world, Sir Lancelot of the Lake: I who
bring you this letter was Elaine of Astolat.  I
have died, Sir Lancelot, because you could not
love me.  Now I beg that you will pray for
my soul and will bury me as I ought to be
buried.'

"When the King had read this letter none
of them spoke at first.  Then the Queen said:
'Lancelot, could you not do her some little
kindness, to make her sorrow less, so that she
might live?'

"'She would have nothing but my love,' said
Lancelot.  'I could not give her that if I
would, for true love, such as she should have
had, must come of itself, and cannot be compelled.'

"So the next day Elaine was buried as if she
had been a queen, and Lancelot and the King
and the Queen and the knights of the Round
Table were there to see it done.  And the boat
that had brought her down the river went back
up the river toward Astolat."





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.. _`THE GIANTS' DANCE`:

.. _`Stonehenge`:

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   Stonehenge

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   CHAPTER VII

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE GIANTS' DANCE

.. vspace:: 2

Instead of going from Winchester straight
back to London, we took a little run across to
Salisbury.  It was not so much that we wanted
to see Salisbury, though it is a pretty place and
has a fine cathedral, but I wanted to go to
Stonehenge.  To look at Stonehenge, I think,
brings one nearer to the history and the legend
of ancient Britain than anything else that I have
ever seen.  And if Stonehenge were nothing
at all it would still be worth going to, for the
ride to it from Salisbury is one of the prettiest
in all England.  There is no such remarkable
scenery, perhaps, as is to be found in many
another place, but on that day when we rode out
there the fields were fairly blazing with
flowers, red and yellow and purple, and the little
gardens were almost too full of them to hold
them all without spilling.  It was just a free,
open, country ride, with everything around
looking peaceful and sweet and beautiful and
happy.

And when you take that ride, if you trust to
a driver who knows the way and where you
ought to go, he will bring you soon to Old
Sarum.  It is a hill, with a thick double wall of
earth and a ditch around it, and it was a
Roman town once.  Perhaps it was a British town
or stronghold before that.  It reminded us a
little of Cadbury Castle, but it is a good deal
bigger.  It had a cathedral in it once, but for
some reason or other the people began to get
tired of living in it and moved down and made
the town of Salisbury, and there a new
cathedral was built, and Old Sarum came to be
nothing at all any more but a great hilltop, with its
walls and its ditch around it.

From Old Sarum we went on to Amesbury.
I told the driver that I wanted to stay there for
a little while.  I think he meant to make a little
stay, whether I had mentioned it or not, for he
got ready to do it with less explanation than it
usually takes to get a driver to do anything he
is not used to.  He stopped at the little hotel
and gave the horse a drink, and we gave him
enough to get something to drink for himself.
Then we walked on toward the church and told
him to follow us in a little while.

We had walked about in the churchyard for
only a minute when we saw a man coming
toward us.  He proved to be the vicar, who had
seen us and was coming to show us the church.
He did show it to us and told us a great many
interesting things about it which I cannot
remember well enough to repeat them here.  But
I do remember that it was so old that I
decided that there must have been a church here
in King Arthur's time, and that perhaps some
part of this very one was standing then.

"But where is the old abbey?" I asked.
"Are there not some ruins of that left?"

We were outside the church now and were
looking about at the fields and the trees.  "Oh,
no," the vicar said, "there is nothing left of the
abbey now.  It was very near where that large
house is now.  That is the house of Sir Edmund
Antrobus.  We can come nearer and look at it,
if you like."  So we went nearer and looked at it,
and it was a handsome house, and then we went
and stood on a little bridge across the Avon.  It
was a shady place and the water was clear, so
that we could see the trout swimming in it, and
we looked down the river under a green arch
of trees that grew on the sides of the stream
and sent their branches to meet above it.  "I
should like you to remember this place," I said,
"because Queen Guinevere lived here for a
long time.  It is not time yet for me to tell you
how or why, but I will tell you when the time
comes, and till then I want you to remember
how the place looks.  Remember these fields
and this river and these trees.  I don't know,
of course, whether they looked the same then,
but they may have been not so very different.
So think of Queen Guinevere sometimes standing
on a bridge, just as we are now, or on the
bank of the river, and looking down into just
such clear water and up at just such cool,
green, spreading trees.  Remember that she
lived over there where Sir Edmund Antrobus
lives now, and that she walked many a morning,
it is likely, across these very fields, to a
church that stood where the church is now.
That is all.  Remember it till we come to the
story about it."

By the time we came out to the road the
driver was waiting for us and wondering what
we had found to keep us so long.  We got
into the carriage and went on again, and
nothing happened till we got to Stonehenge.  Now
I know that you don't want me to describe
Stonehenge to you.  If you want to know a
great deal more than you do about it, you
can find it in a good many big and learned
books.  What I wish I could do would be to
make you see it, and I cannot do that.  It is
not much to tell about, but it is a wonderful
thing to see.  It seems to me to mean so
much, standing there, so lonely, in the middle
of Salisbury Plain—that great circle of
half-smoothed stones—grand, sad, silent, older than
history—a solid, real, noble thing, left to us
from a time out of which we have little else
but fairy tales.  It was a huge circle of stones
once, square pillars set on end and big blocks
laid across them.  Now many of them are
lying on the ground, where they fell so long
ago that some of them are half buried in it.
Some way off from the circle is another tall
stone, that they say the devil once threw at a
monk.  He was such a good man that the devil
could not hurt him, but it struck his foot and
took the print of his heel, and the print is there
now, to prove the story.  In the morning of the
day of the summer when the sun goes highest
in the sky, people come here to see it rise.  I
have never been here then, but they say that
on that morning, if you stand over across the
circle and look through one of the great stone
gateways, you will see the sun rise exactly
over the point of this stone that the devil
threw at the monk.

"I am sorry," I said, "that I cannot tell you
the history of Stonehenge, but I can tell you
the story of it, if you care to hear it."

To be sure Helen cared to hear it.

"We shall have to go back, then," I said, "to
a time long before King Arthur was born.  Lud
was the King of England.  It was for him that
London was named.  Perhaps the two names
do not sound very much alike to you, but you
know names will get a good deal twisted, the
best you can do.  Lud had a brother named
Levelys, who had gone over to France and
married a princess and had become King of
France.  And about that time King Lud and
his people began to have a great deal of
trouble.  There were three things that troubled
them especially.  The first was a race of people
called the Coranians.  I don't know where
these Coranians came from or what they did to
make themselves so troublesome, but there is
no doubt that, for some reason or other, they
did not get on well with Lud's people.  And
the worst of it was that there seemed to be no
way to get rid of them.  The reason was that
they had such good ears.  For they could hear
anything that was said anywhere on the island,
no matter how softly it was spoken, if the wind
was the right way.  And so no plan against
them could ever be talked over without their
finding out all about it.

"And the second trouble was a noise, a
horrible scream, that was heard in every house in
England on the eve of every May Day.  It was
so loud and so fearful that it frightened people
half to death, and it went through them like a
knife, and it chilled their blood and filled them
with horror, and some of them went mad because of it.

"And the third trouble was that the King
never could keep anything to eat in the house.
No matter how much provision there was at
night, it was all gone the next morning, and
nobody could find out what became of it.

"Now, it occurred to King Lud that his
brother Levelys was a very wise man, and that
it would be worth while to go to France and
see him and ask him if he could tell what ought
to be done about all these troubles.  So he got
ready a fleet, very quietly, so that the
Coranians should know as little as possible about
it, and sailed toward France.  And when his
brother heard that he was coming he got ready
a fleet too, and sailed from France to meet him.
When they met they were very glad to see
each other, and they got ready to talk about
King Lud's troubles.  Levelys was so wise that
he knew just what Lud had come for, without
being told, so he tried to find a way for them to
talk without the Coranians hearing them.  And
he had a horn made of brass, and he thought
that if they talked through that they could not
be heard even by such ears as the Coranians had.

"But when they began to talk through it
they found that whatever either of them said
into it nothing would come out but angry
and hostile words.  Then Levelys knew that a
demon had got into the horn.  So he poured
wine through the horn and drove the demon
out.  Then they found that they could hear
through the horn much better.  Levelys talked
through the horn and told Lud that he would
give him some insects that would kill the
Coranians.  He must put them in water and then
he must call all the people of the island
together and scatter the water over them.  It
would kill all the Coranians, he said, and it
would not harm Lud's own people.

"As for the second trouble, that of the dreadful
noise, Levelys said that it was caused by
two dragons, that were fighting.  'When you
go home,' he said, 'you must measure your
island and find the exact middle of it.  There
you must dig a pit, and in the pit you must put
a cauldron of the best mead, and you must
cover the top of the cauldron with satin.  Then
you must watch till you see the two dragons
flying in the air and fighting together.  After a
time they will grow weary with fighting and
they will drop down upon the satin and sink
into the cauldron.  Then they will drink all
the mead that there is in it and go to sleep.
After that you must fold the covering of satin
around them and bury them in the strongest
place that you have.

"'And the third trouble,' Levelys went on,
'the disappearing of all your food, is caused by
a great enchanter, who comes and carries it
away.  And the reason that nobody who watches
ever sees him is that he casts spells over all of
them and makes them sleep.  But you yourself
must watch, and you must have a cauldron
filled with cold water beside you, and when you
feel like sleeping you must get into the
cauldron and the cold water will keep you awake.'

"When he had heard all this Lud went home.
And the first thing that he did was to call all
the people together, as his brother had told
him.  Then he sprinkled the water with the
insects in it over all the people and it killed all
the Coranians and did no harm to his own people.

"Then he measured the island and found that
the very middle of it was in Oxford.  You can
measure it yourself, on the map, if you want to
find out whether the middle of it is really in
Oxford.  I don't say that it is, only that that
was what Lud found.  But I suppose he must
have been right about it, for the rest of the
experiment worked perfectly.  That is to say, he
dug the pit and put the cauldron in the pit and
the mead in the cauldron, and the satin over
the cauldron, and waited to see the fight of the
dragons.  And the dragons came and fought
and fell down into the cauldron and drank up
the mead and slept, and Lud covered them with
the satin and buried them in Snowdon, which is
a great mountain in Wales.  I am sorry that
we cannot go to Snowdon at present, for I
know that it must be worth seeing.

"And finally Lud made such a great feast
that there was sure to be a good deal of it left,
and then he sat up to see what would become
of it.  He put on his armor and sat down and
waited, and by and by he began to hear such
sweet music that he could scarcely help going
to sleep.  But he got into the cauldron of cold
water which he had ready, and that kept him
awake.  And at last there came a great man,
dressed all in armor and carrying a big basket.
He began to put the food into the basket and
Lud began to wonder how he could do it, for
it seemed to him that there was a great deal
more of it than the basket could ever hold.
But the man put it all in and then started to
go away with it.  Then Lud stopped him and
made him fight with him.  And Lud beat him
and would not grant him mercy till he
promised to be Lud's servant and to restore the
value of all that he had ever taken from him.

"Now we come to the second part of the
story.  To get to it we have to come down a
good many years, to the time when Merlin, the
great magician and wise man of King Arthur's
court, was a boy.  We almost always think of
him as an old man, with white hair and a long,
white beard.  But he was a boy once, just like
anybody else.  And a wonderful thing about it
was that he knew just as much more than anybody
else in the world when he was a boy as he
did when he was an old man.

"There was a King of England named Vortigern.
He had no right to be King of England,
but he was.  King Constantine had died not
long ago, and had left three sons.  They were
Constans, Pendragon, and Uther.  Vortigern,
being very powerful at that time, had had
Constans made King and he himself had become his
chief adviser.  Then he had contrived to get
Constans killed and had been crowned as King
himself.  Pendragon and Uther were too young
then to rule, and those who had the care of
them had fled with them to France, because
they knew that Vortigern would kill them too,
if they stayed in England.  And in France the
princes lived and grew up to be young men.

"While they were doing that, Vortigern was
having a good deal of trouble in trying to govern
the kingdom that did not belong to him.  He
did it so badly that the people turned against
him, and he had many enemies from abroad
besides.  At last he called his wise men together
and they told him that there was nothing left
for him to do but to build the strongest tower
he could, in the safest place he could, and then
stay in it and try to keep himself from his enemies.

"So Vortigern hunted all over the island to
find the best place to build his tower, and he
decided that the best place was Snowdon.  But
when his workmen began to build there was
more trouble.  No matter how much they built
in a day, it all fell down in the night, and the
next day they had to begin all over again.
When that had gone on for awhile Vortigern
called his wise men together again and asked
them what was the matter.

"The wise men did not know in the least, but
they tried to look wiser than they had ever
looked before in their lives, and they said that
in a few days they would find out.  Then they
got together, away from the King, and talked it
all over and tried to make up their minds why
the King's tower would not stand.  I don't
know all the absurd ways that they had of
thinking that they found out things, but the one that
they believed in the most was studying the stars.
So they studied the stars as hard as ever they
could, but not a thing could they find out from
them about the King's tower and why it would
not stand.  But they were dreadfully scared by
something else that they thought they saw in
the stars.  This was that every one of them
would finally be brought to his death by a child
who never had a father.  Then one of them, who
was a little brighter than the others, said: 'If we
cannot do anything for the King, perhaps we
can do something for ourselves.  Let us try to
kill this child who never had a father, before
he kills us.  Let us tell the King that we have
found out from the stars that his tower will
stand, if he mixes the mortar with the blood of
a child who never had a father.  Then he will
find the child and kill him and we shall be safe."

"They all thought that this was a good plan,
so they went and told the King that he must
find a child who never had a father and mix his
blood into the mortar.  So the King sent out
messengers in every direction to hunt for a
child who never had a father.  As I told you at
first, Merlin was a child then, and perhaps you
remember that I told you a long time ago that
nobody ever knew who Merlin's father was,
unless, as some people said, he was the son of a
devil.  Well, one day two of Vortigern's
messengers came to the town where Merlin lived,
and Merlin and some other children were
playing in the street.

"Just as the messengers came along Merlin
struck one of his playmates.  The boy cried out
and asked Merlin how he dared to strike him,
when he was the son of a great man and when
Merlin never had any father.  When the
messengers heard that, of course they were
interested at once.  They asked about Merlin and
they found that the story was indeed that this
boy never had any father, so they told him that
the King wanted him and that he must come
with them.  'I am ready to go with you,' Merlin
said, 'and I am not afraid, though I know that
the King means to kill me.  You could never
have found me if I had not been willing that
you should.  I knew that you were looking
for me and I struck the other boy so that he
would say just what he did, to tell you that I
was the child that the King wanted.  I shall not
let the King kill me and I shall tell him what
makes his tower fall down.'

"Then the messengers went back to the King
and took Merlin with them.  When he came
before the King Merlin said: 'My lord, you
mean to kill me because your wise men have
told you that my blood will make your tower
stand.  But they know nothing about it.  Call
them and let me question them and prove to
you that they know nothing about it.'

"So the King called his wise men and Merlin
said to them: 'What is under the place where
the King wants to build his tower?'

"The wise men studied and whispered together
and tried to look wiser than ever, but at
last they had to say that they did not know
what was under the place.  'Then I will tell
you,' said Merlin; 'there is water under it; my
lord, have your workmen dig down and see.

"So the workmen were set to digging and
after awhile they came to the water.  'Now
what is under that?' said Merlin to the wise men.

"And again they could not tell.  'There are
two great stones under it,' said Merlin; 'draw
the water off and see.'

"So they drew off the water and there were
the stones, just as Merlin said.  'Now,' said
Merlin to the wise men, 'tell the King what is
under these stones.'

"And the wise men, who were getting pretty
well scared by this time, could not tell.  'There
are two dragons under the stones,' said Merlin;
'one of them is red and the other is white;
when the stones are lifted they will fight and the
red dragon will kill the white one.'

"The wise men had not another word to say
and the King told the workmen to take up the
stones.  They took them up and, surely enough,
there were the dragons.  And, just as Merlin had
said, they began to fight.  People were fond of
fights in those days and there surely never was
a better one of its kind than this.  But everybody
who saw it felt that it could be seen better
a little way off.  They were a good deal relieved
when Merlin told them that the dragons would
not hurt any of them and would only kill each
other.  And no doubt it was a fine fight to look
at.  The dragons were horrible creatures, with
snaky bodies and wings like bats and long, sharp
teeth and claws.  And they flew above the heads
of the people and struck at each other with
their claws and twisted about each other and
tore with their teeth and breathed fire out of
their mouths, and roared and shrieked till the
air shook.  And at last the red dragon killed
the white one, and then he fell down to the
ground, and in a little while he died too.

"'Now,' said Merlin, 'you can build your
tower and it will stand.  But what is to be
done,' he went on, 'with these men who tried
to make you kill me?  Is it not fair, my lord,
that you should give them to me and let me
do whatever I like with them?'

"'That is fair,' said the King; 'take them and
do with them what you like.'

"Of course the wise men were all begging
Merlin for mercy now, and telling him that all
they did was only because the stars had told
them that he was to cause their death.  'That
is true,' said Merlin; 'I know that you really
thought that you saw that in the stars, but I
know too that it was only because an evil spirit
was deceiving you.  He is a spirit who hates
me and he made you see what you saw in
the stars in the hope of destroying me.  So
it was not so much your fault, and I forgive you.'

"After that Vortigern built his tower and it
stood.  But he was not happy or safe in it long.
The sons of the old King Constantine, Pendragon
and Uther, who had been taken to France, were
grown up by this time and they came over to
England with an army, to get back from
Vortigern the kingdom which belonged to them.  To
make a short story of it, they captured
Vortigern's strong tower and killed him, and then
Pendragon was King of England.  But the
country was not peaceful yet.  The Saxons,
who had come many times before, came still
and tried to conquer the Britons.  Then Merlin
foretold that there would be a great battle on
Salisbury Plain.  There, he said, Pendragon
and Uther and their army would fight with the
Saxons and would beat them, but one of the
brothers would be killed.  He would not say
which one, but he said that the one who lived
must take his brother's name, besides his own,
and be King of England, and he must build a
monument to his brother on Salisbury Plain
that should last forever.

"So the great battle was fought on Salisbury
Plain, all around where we are now, and the
Saxons were beaten.  But when it was over,
they found that many of the Britons had been
killed, and that the King, Pendragon, was
among them.  So his brother Uther was made
King and took his name and was called Uther
Pendragon.  Then the new King sent for
Merlin and said to him: 'How shall I build the
monument to my brother on Salisbury Plain, so
that it shall last forever?'

"And Merlin answered: 'Send to Ireland
and get the Giants' Dance, and set it up for a
monument to your brother.'

"'What is the Giants' Dance?' the King asked.

"'It is a circle of great stones,' Merlin
answered.  'The giants brought them long ago
from Africa and set them up in Ireland.'

"'And how shall I bring them here?' the
King asked.

"'Send ships and men to get them,' Merlin
answered, 'and I will go to show them how.'

"So the ships were got ready and Merlin
crossed over with the men into Ireland.  He
knew the place to go, and there stood the
Giants' Dance, a great circle of upright stones,
with other great stones lying across the tops
of them.  'Now see if you can take them
down,' said Merlin.  And they tried.  They
brought timbers and ropes and made levers
and pulled and pushed and did everything that
they could think of.  And they could no more
move even one of the stones than they could
move the mountain that they stood on.  'Now
rest a little while,' said Merlin.

"Then Merlin, all alone, walked about the
stones and in and out among them, and he
seemed to be saying something or singing
something, but nobody could understand what
it was.  'Try again to move them,' he said.

"They tried again and this time it was as
easy as if the stones had been bags filled with
air.  They put them on board the ships and
they sailed back to England, and Merlin set
them up, just as they had been in Ireland, here
on Salisbury Plain, where Pendragon had been
killed.  And afterward, when Uther Pendragon
died, he was buried here at Stonehenge, too.

"That is all of the story and here is
Stonehenge to prove that it is true.  If anybody
cares to say that this story is not true, let him
tell me how else these stones came here.  Let
him try to tell me how else they could come
here.  Merlin told King Uther Pendragon that
he would build a monument that should stand
forever.  Forever is a long time.  Many of the
stones have fallen now, you see, but still many
of them stand, and it is not for us to say that
Merlin was wrong and that this monument will
not be here always.  All that we can know is
that the stones, fallen or standing, are here
where Merlin put them, that they still show us
the place where the battle was and where
Pendragon fell, and that the sun, on the longest
day of the summer, still rises over the one stone
away down there and looks through the gate
that Merlin built, into the wonderful, old,
mysterious, magic circle, where the two kings,
Pendragon and Uther, are buried.  And after
all, I think that I would rather not know any
more about Stonehenge than that."





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.. _`ON THE EDGE OF LYONNESSE`:

.. _`St. Michael's Mount`:

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   St. Michael's Mount

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   CHAPTER VIII


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   ON THE EDGE OF LYONNESSE

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We had meant, when Helen's mother should
come from Paris, to go back to Glastonbury
and begin our journey again where we had
left off.  But when she came we thought better
of it.  We decided that, since we were going
to the Southwest of England again, we might
as well go all the way and see the Land's End.
Then, we thought, we could go to Glastonbury
just as well on the way back.

So it happened that when Helen's mother
was with us again, we took the longest railway
ride that we had taken yet, and at the end of
it we found ourselves in Penzance.  Penzance
is the place where the pirates were, you know.
We had always supposed that that was a
made-up story and that there never were really any
pirates of Penzance.  But we found that the
pirates were there still.  Only now they do
not scuttle ships any more, if they ever did;
they keep hotels.  But that is an unpleasant
subject.

We set off the next morning for a long drive—which
was to be partly a walk—to the Land's
End.  There were many things that were
worth seeing before we got to the Land's End,
or anywhere near it.  First there was the
harbor of Penzance, one of the prettiest that I ever
looked out upon.  And over on the other side
of it, stately and beautiful against the summer
morning sky, stood St. Michael's Mount.
St. Michael's Mount is a cone-shaped hill, rising
high out of the water, with a castle on the top
of it.  It is one of those things that are so
picturesque that they surprise you when you see
them in a real scene, because they look too
perfect to belong outside a painted picture.

"And who do you suppose used to live on the
top of that hill?" I said.  "Why, the old giant
Cormoran, the one whom Jack the Giant-Killer
knocked on the head with his pickaxe, the very
first giant whom he killed.  Of course I should
not think of telling you that story, at your time
of life; I only tell you that there is the place.
But I might tell you about another giant, and
let you try to straighten out his story, if you
like, better than I can.  Over across the
channel from here, in France, there is another
St. Michael's Mount.  I have never seen it, but the
picture of it looks as much like this one as if it
were its own brother.  I think that I have told
you before that the people of old days used to
think that high hills belonged somehow to
St. Michael.  Well, over there on the other
St. Michael's Mount lived another giant with whom
King Arthur himself once had a little tussle.
The giant's name was Ryence, and he had a
mantle trimmed with kings' beards.  You
remember something, perhaps, that I told you
once about a King named Ryence, who had a
mantle trimmed with kings' beards.  It is rather
curious that there should be two of them.

"It was when King Arthur went over to
France on his way to fight the Emperor of Rome
that he heard of this giant.  He was a terror to
the whole country, for he killed hundreds of
people and spoiled crops, and his favorite food
was little boys.  I don't know why he liked little
boys so much better than little girls, but I
suppose he knew more about which were the better
to eat than I do.

"When Arthur heard about the giant he took
Sir Kay and Sir Bedivere with him and went
to the foot of the hill.  There he told them to
wait for him, and went up the hill alone.  He
found the giant sitting before a fire cooking a
man for his supper.  Arthur got close to him and
wounded him with his sword before the giant
knew that he was there.  Then he sprang up
and caught hold of Arthur, and they both fell
and rolled over and over each other clear to the
bottom of the hill, and Arthur managed to give
the giant two or three more wounds on the way.
Kay and Bedivere ran to see if the King was
killed, and they found that he was scarcely hurt
at all and that the giant was dead.

"I don't say that there is anything so very
remarkable about that.  It is just a plain sort of
every-day giant story.  But here are the strange
points, I think.  Here were two hills looking
wonderfully alike and with the same name, and
a giant lived and was killed on each of them.
And here were two giants, both named Ryence,
for King Ryence was a giant, too, and they both
had mantles trimmed with kings' beards, and
Arthur killed one and beat the other.  It looks
to me as if two stories, at least, had got a little
mixed, or else one story twisted in two.  How
does it look to you?"

There is no reason, that I can see, why I
should try to tell you all about the way from
Penzance to the Land's End.  It will not do
you much good to know that it was grand and
beautiful, as long as you were not there to see
its grandeur and its beauty.  We stopped at
St. Buryan, and a very old woman showed us
the church.  It is a curious old place, and it
has some fine carvings.  But the old woman,
who showed us everything and explained it to
us, could not understand what there was about
it that we found interesting.  She had been
showing this church to people, she said, for
more than fifty years, and she had never been
able to make out yet why they wanted to see it.

Then we went on to see the Logan Rock,
and got a guide to find it for us.  We could
never have found it for ourselves, because it is
so mixed up with so many other rocks.  It is a
huge rocking stone.  It weighs I don't know
how many tons, but a strong man can move it
a little, if he knows just how and where to take
hold of it and push.  The guide rocked it for
us, and he said that we did it ourselves when
we tried, but I think he flattered us.  He helped
us to climb on the top of it—not an easy thing
to do at all—and then he rocked it with us
sitting on it.  As he led the way back he took us
through a narrow passage between two great
rocks and told us that we must each of us
make a wish as we passed through and never
tell what it was, and then it would come true.
"But we don't need to ask what the young
ladies wish," he said, "they all wish the same
thing."  We wondered how many years he had
been making that same joke over and over
again.  No doubt he must have got some
pretty tips by it, when there were young
women and young men both in the party.

We were going to walk from here to the Land's
End, five miles, for it was one of the places
where we had been told that we must walk, so
as to see the scenery.  We had already told
the driver to go on to the Land's End and wait
there for us.  The guide showed us how to go
and offered to go with us, but we thought that
we did not need him.  "You won't be able to
see the Scillys to-day," he said.  "Sometimes
you can see them from the Land's End, but it
isn't clear enough to-day.  But you can be sure
of a fine day to-morrow.  When it is clear
enough to see the Scillys it almost always rains
the next day."

So we felt cheered at missing a sight that we
had hoped to see, and went on our way.  All
the way the walk was up headlands and down
ravines, with many grand and beautiful
pictures—great crags and domes and pinnacles of
rock and deep valleys and gorges and caves,
and the sea always crashing and roaring down
below us.

And when we came to the Land's End, of
course that was the best of all.  For there the
sea seemed rougher than anywhere else, though
it was not a rough day.  It was no new thing
for us to stand on a point of rock, with all the
land behind us and nothing but boundless
ocean before us.  We did not need to come to
the Land's End or to England for that.  But
there was something awful and solemn about
these towers of stone that stood here to keep
the sea from washing England away, and about
the sea that was working at them while we
looked, dashing up against them and slipping
back and dashing up again, as it had been
doing for thousands of years before we had come
to look, and as it would do for thousands of
years after we were gone.  And after all these
ages of work and struggle the waves seemed to
be still angry, still fierce and full of wrath that
the land should resist them so long.  "Old
rocks," they seemed to say, "you think that you
are firm and steady and strong.  But wait—and
wait—there is much time before both of us still.
Stand against us as you will; we shall still clash
and beat upon you, and at last, in spite of all
your firmness, we shall wear and wash you
away, and we shall cover you sometime as we
covered old Lyonnesse."

Lyonnesse!  That, after all, I believe, is the
wonderful thing to think of at the Land's End.
"Yes, now," I said, "we are looking straight
out over Lyonnesse—Tristram's country, the
country that is lost.  This is where it began,
and it stretched away out there where there is
nothing now but ocean, away out to the Scilly
Islands, which we are not to see to-day.  For
thirty miles old Lyonnesse reached out from
here, and even now, they say, for all that way,
the bottom of the ocean lies at an even depth,
and not like the bottom in other places.  And
they say, too, that when the water had covered
Lyonnesse for so long that people had almost
forgotten that there ever was any land there,
the fishermen used to think of it again, because
they sometimes drew up their hooks with pieces
of doors and windows caught upon them.  And
nothing more than these ever came back of a
country that had its towns and its fields and its
forests and its people, which were all lost under
the water together.

"And I remember an old book which says
that more than Lyonnesse was taken away from
Cornwall by the sea.  For the old book says
that St. Michael's Mount, which we saw this
morning, used to have another name, that meant
'the rock in the wood.'  And from this it was
thought that St. Michael's Mount stood in a
forest once, and not in the sea, as it does now.
And the book, which was written about three
hundred years ago, says that even then, when
the tides were low around St. Michael's Mount,
the stumps and roots of great trees were
sometimes seen half buried in the sand."

Perhaps this is all nothing but old fable, but
the land of Cornwall and the sea of Cornwall
look as if it were true.  How could these terrible
waves and tempests tear and beat and surge
upon this country, even with its walls of rock,
without taking something away?  You can
laugh at the old wives' tales—if it is your way
to laugh at such things—it is not ours—while
you are at home, but when you stand at the
Land's End and look out to sea, if you have a
bit of the love of a story in you, you must and
you will believe in Lyonnesse.





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.. _`THE SIEGE PERILOUS`:

.. _`The Land's End`:

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   The Land's End

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   CHAPTER IX


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   THE SIEGE PERILOUS

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It does not matter just where we were when
we told and heard these next few stories.
Neither do I need to use quotation marks
all through them.  You will understand that
we did tell them and hear them somewhere.
They belong to no place.  When King Arthur's
knights set out from Camelot to seek the Holy
Grail everything seemed at once to grow
mysterious and marvellous and magical.  Place and
time were unknown and almost unthought of.
Knights rode about without knowing or caring
where they went.  Sometimes they found more
wonderful adventures than had ever been
thought of before, and sometimes they rode
for days and saw no house and no living thing.
Friends met friends and did not know them;
fathers fought with sons, and brothers with
brothers.  New knights won glory and knights
who were old and tried were put to shame.
Common men became prophets, and so prophets
became common.  The worst of men gave counsel
to the best of knights, and the knights could
scarcely tell whether the things that they were
told to do were the best and the wisest or the
most foolish and the worst.  There were signs
and omens and visions, and there were hard
trials of courage and of faithfulness.

There are a hundred stories of what was seen
and said and done.  They are all different, and
among them all much seems confused and dim
and uncertain.  But everywhere and through
everything is seen, like a clear flash of fleeting
flame, one perfect knight, the strongest, noblest,
greatest knight who ever came to Arthur's
court, the one best knight of all the world.
Others wander and stray and are tempted and
overcome and disheartened, and then there is a
gleam of a fire-colored armor, and there is a
swift stroke of a spear that never missed its
aim, the wicked are overthrown, the helpless
are rescued, and the knight has passed on
toward his goal of the Holy Grail.

It all began on the night before the feast of
Pentecost, when so many strange things
happened.  The King and the Queen and the
knights were in the great hall at Camelot, and
a woman, whom no one knew, rode into the
hall on horseback.  She dismounted and came
before the King and said: "My lord, tell me
which is Sir Lancelot."

"That is Sir Lancelot," said the King, pointing
to where he sat.

"Sir Lancelot," she said, "I am sent to you
by King Pelles.  He asks you to come with me
to an abbey in a forest not far from here."

"And what am I to do there?" Lancelot asked.

"I am not to tell you that," she said; "I am
only to bring you to the abbey."

"I will go with you, then," said Lancelot,
"if it is to please King Pelles."

"Lancelot," said the Queen, "to-morrow is
the feast of Pentecost; shall you not be with
us then?"

"Madame," said the woman, "he shall be
back here by dinner-time to-morrow."

So Lancelot put on his armor and rode with
the woman till they came to the abbey in the
forest.  There, when he was unarmed, some
nuns came to him, leading a young man.  "Sir
Lancelot," one of them said, "this young squire
is the grandson of King Pelles.  He is strong
and brave and noble.  He has learned much
and it is time now for him to be made a knight.
He asks you, and so does King Pelles and so
do we, that you will make him a knight."

Then Lancelot looked at the young man.
He was scarcely more than a boy in his years
but he was tall and strong.  Lancelot thought
that he had never seen so beautiful a face
besides its beauty there was courage in it, and
freedom and hope and all the rich flush and
glow of a bright, new manhood.  And a strange
feeling came to Lancelot as he looked, and a
voice seemed to be saying in his ears: "He has
come!  He has come!"  Lancelot could not
have told what it meant.  He only felt that
there was something in this young man that
made him different from any other he had ever
seen, something without a name, by which he
knew that he was greater and finer and truer
than the rest.  "To-night, then," said
Lancelot, "let him watch his arms in your chapel,
and to-morrow I will make him a knight."

And so it was done.  The young man watched
his arms in the chapel while the others slept,
and in the morning Lancelot made him a knight.
Then Lancelot begged the new knight to come
to the court with him, but he answered: "No,
it is not time for me to go to the court, but I
shall be there with you soon."

"So Lancelot rode back to Camelot alone.
And then began the most wonderful day of
all King Arthur's reign.  When Lancelot had
come and all the knights were sitting in the
hall a squire ran in and went to the King and
said: 'My lord, I have just come up from the
river, and down there a great stone is floating
on the water and there is a sword sticking in it.'

"That is a wonderful thing, truly," said the
King; "we will go and see it."

So the King and the Queen and all the
knights left the hall and went down to the
river.  And there, truly enough, was the stone,
floating on the river, and there was the sword
sticking in it, as the squire had said.  And the
King saw letters on the stone and he came near
and read them: "No one shall ever draw this
sword out of this stone except the one to whom
it belongs, the best knight of the world."

"Surely," said the King, "I think that the
best knights of the world are in my court; who
will try to draw this sword?" and he looked
toward Lancelot.

"I do not think," said Lancelot, "that the
sword is mine, and I will not try to draw it."

But many of the other knights tried to draw
the sword and could not, and the King looked
at Lancelot again and said: "Will you not try
to take this sword?  Surely there is no better
knight in the world than you."

"No," said Lancelot, "it is not for me.
Remember, my lord, all the wonderful things that
Merlin told long ago.  The best knight of the
world is not among us yet, but I believe that
he is coming soon.  Let us all go back to the
hall, my lord, and keep our feast and wait for him."

And back they went to the hall, and they
were scarcely in their places when there came
another wonder.  An old man came into the
hall, leading a young man by the hand.  They
saw that he was an old man only by his figure
and by his step and by the end of a white beard
which they could see.  For he wore a long,
white robe, and a hood hung low down over
his face, so that they could not see it.  The
young man was dressed all in flame-colored
armor, and he had no shield or sword, but an
empty scabbard hung by his side.  They came
and stood close to the throne and closer to the
Siege Perilous.  Bors sat near them, and it
seemed to him that he knew, just as it had
seemed to him once before, long ago, at the
Castle of Carbonek, that this old man was
Joseph of Arimathæa, who would have died
hundreds of years ago, but that the power of
the Holy Grail kept him alive.  And he knew,
too, that the young man was the beautiful
child with the deep eyes and the bright, sweet
face and the hair like gold, whom he had seen
at the Castle of Carbonek.  Percivale sat next
to Bors, and it seemed to him too that he knew
the old man, though how he could not tell.
Next to Bors on the other side was Lancelot,
and what he knew was that the young man
was the one whom he had made a knight that
morning at the abbey.

"King Arthur," said the old man, "I have
brought you a new knight, Sir Galahad.  You
have waited for him long, for you were told of
him before he was born, and his place at your
Round Table was waiting for him before you
yourself were born."

"He is welcome here," said the King, "and
you are welcome too."  But almost before he
had spoken the old man was gone from the
hall and the young knight in the flame-colored
armor stood before him alone.  Yes, there at
last he stood, Galahad, whose name had been
spoken with wonder or with hope or with
doubt so many times.  Only the best knight
of the world, Merlin had said, should sit in
the Siege Perilous, and the best knight of the
world should be Galahad.  How many times
Arthur had looked at that seat and wondered
why his best knight, Lancelot, could not sit
there, and what the knight could be like who
should be better than Lancelot.  And now here
he stood—Galahad.

But there was something else for the best
knight of the world to do.  The knights who
filled the hall were not thinking then of the
Siege Perilous.  They were thinking of the
stone floating on the river, and the sword
sticking in it.  The King saw them whispering
together and pointing that way and he said to the
young man: "If you are indeed that Galahad
whom we have waited for so long, you are
more welcome than any other who has come
here since Lancelot, my best knight till now,
the son of my old friend King Ban.  It you are
that true Galahad who was promised, then you
will be the best of all my knights—better than
Lancelot.  Will you come and prove to us
whether you are so?"

Then the King took the young man's hand
and led him down to the river and all the rest
followed them to see.  And the King said:
"Try if you can draw that sword, for none of
my other knights can draw it."

"See, my lord," said the young man, "I have
brought no sword, only this empty scabbard,
for I knew that I should find my sword here."  And
he took hold of the sword that stuck in
the stone and drew it out and put it in his scabbard.

There was no doubt of it now; the knight
whom they had waited for had come.  Yet the
King's face was sad as he led the way back to
the hall, for it seemed to him that now there
could be little to wait for and the days of the
Round Table would not be many more.  But
other thoughts came to him a moment later,
when the new knight knelt before him to take
the oath that would make him a knight of the
Round Table.  For then, just for an instant, it
seemed to him that the time had gone back to
the beginning of his reign.  There was a look
in the young man's eyes that brought back the
day when Lancelot had knelt before him like
this and had sworn this oath and when he had
believed that Lancelot would surely be the one
perfect knight.  Yes, it was the same clear
light that he had seen for an instant that day in
Lancelot's eyes, the glow of something great
and wonderful, he knew not what.  But there
was more in the face of this new knight.  There
was something which told Arthur that, though
he swore that in all things he would be true
and loyal to God and to the King, yet, without
the oath, he could never have a thought that
would not be true and loyal.

And the King scarcely knew whether it was
great joy or great sorrow that made him
almost tremble before this boy.  And when he
took his hand again they all saw that his face
was white as he turned toward the seat that
was next the throne.  And there at last in that
Siege Perilous were the letters, more of fire
than of gold, as they seemed: "This is the seat
of Galahad."

Those who could see whispered to those who
could not and the word ran down the hall and
then in an instant everyone was still.  After all
these years of waiting, after the wonders and
the prophecies, would any one, even Galahad,
dare to sit in that seat?  They had feared that
seat and had seen it empty so long that they
could not believe it, and they all stood up in
their places and strained their eyes and held
their breaths in wonder and dread.  And of all
who were there Galahad alone had no fear and
no dread.  Only for an instant he stood there,
with the eyes of all the rest upon him and his
own upon the King's, and then he sat in the
Siege Perilous.

Every seat at the Round Table was filled.
For the first time since Merlin made that table
for Uther Pendragon there were a hundred and
fifty knights around it and no seat was empty.
Then of a sudden the hall grew dark.  Thick
clouds seemed to have come over the sun and
they heard a great wind outside.  Then there
was thunder that shook the castle and almost
deafened them.  It was over in a moment and
through an upper window there shone one broad
beam of sunlight.  It slanted down from the
top of the hall to near where Galahad sat, and
still the rest of the hall was dark.  And then
came the strangest thing of all.  They saw a
soft, red glow of light, through the darkness of
the hall, and it moved toward the place where
the sunlight fell.  They could not see what it
was clearly, for it had a covering of white silk,
and the red glow shone through this and filled
the room.  And the thing that shone was in the
form of a goblet.  It moved, as if someone were
carrying it, but they could not see anyone.  It
moved till it came where the sun shone upon it,
and then the hall was bright and the knights
could see one another.  And it seemed to each
of them that the others looked greater and
stronger and more beautiful than he had ever
seen them look before.  They knew, all of them,
that this that they almost saw, but could not
see, was the Holy Grail.  It passed on again,
away from the sunlight and across the hall, and
the red glow was gone.  The sunlight was
gone too, and then the old light came slowly
back and they all saw that the table had been
covered with food.

At first they were all so full of wonder at the
sight that none of them could speak.  Then
Gawain, who sat on King Arthur's left, rose
and held up the cross-shaped hilt of his sword.
"My lord," he said, "we know that it was the
Holy Grail that passed before us just now.
But we did not see it.  So now I make this vow,
my lord, that I will leave this court and seek
the Holy Grail, that I may see it more openly
than we have all seen it to-day.  I will seek it
for a year and a day, if I do not find it sooner,
and if I have not found it then I will come back,
believing that God does not wish that I should
see it."

Then the knight who was next to Gawain
held up the cross-shaped hilt of his sword, as
Gawain had done, and made the same vow,
that he would seek the Holy Grail for a year
and a day, unless he found it sooner.  And so
it went around the table, and they all made the
vow, and last of all Lancelot and Bors and
Percivale and Galahad.

And Arthur had listened to them all and had
spoken no word, but his face was pale and
troubled.  For he knew that if his knights went
away upon this quest many of them would not
come back, and he should never see all the
places at the Round Table full again, as he saw
them now.  And when they had all made the
vow he said in a low voice to Gawain: "When
will you leave us to go upon this quest?"

"At once, my lord," said Gawain; "to-morrow."

"Not so soon as that," said the King.  "Let
me see all my knights together for one more
day.  We will have a tournament to-morrow.
You shall all meet before me once more in one
fine field of combat and then you may go."

And the knights all saw how sad the King
was at their leaving him, and they were all glad
to do as he wished.  But the King had another
reason for the tournament that was to be the
next day.  He did want to see all his knights
together for one last time, but there was more
than that.  For here on his right, in the Siege
Perilous, sat Galahad.  He was the best knight
of all the world, or he could not sit in that seat.
Arthur knew—he could not tell how, but he
knew—that when Galahad left the court to
seek the Holy Grail he would never come
back.  The best knight of the Round Table,
the best knight who had ever been in his court,
would go away forever, and he had never seen
him in one knightly combat and would never
know how he could fight, how he could ride,
or how he bore his arms.  And this was the
reason, more than the other, why Arthur wished
to see one great tournament of all his knights.

So in the morning the meadow at Camelot
was thronged again with the people who came
out to see the tournament, all the more eager
because they had heard of the wonders of the
day before and of Galahad, and because they
knew that he would be there in the field.  The
King sat in the highest place, with the Queen
beside him, and it was with sad faces, though
they were proud too, that they looked down
upon their knights striving together in the
tournament.  They could scarcely have told
afterward what any other knight did, for it
seemed to them all that day that they saw only
one knight.  Wherever they looked they saw
those flame-colored arms of Galahad flashing
up and down the field.  His horse never faltered,
his spear never failed, his arm never grew
weary.  He bore no shield, but every spear
that touched his armor was shattered, and
when he pointed his own spear at any other
knight and charged against him that knight
went down.  But the King and the Queen saw
that, while the others were all falling before
him, he never came near to Lancelot or to Bors
or to Percivale.  He would not joust with them
and so they all three did nobly in the tournament
too.  And the King was so filled with the
wonder of all that he saw Galahad do that when
it was over he could scarcely speak to him.
But he held his hand and looked long at him
and said, in a voice that sounded strange and
uncertain: "Galahad, I have seen the best that
a knight can do."

That was their last night all together in the
great hall at Camelot.  After it came a sad
morning.  The knights were ready early and
the King was ready to see them go, though he
could scarcely take the hand of each and say
good-by, so great was his grief at their going.
The knights all mounted together and rode
through the streets of Camelot, between the
lines of people who had come out of their
houses to see them go, and so out through the
gate and away from the city.  And the King
and the Queen stood on a tower of the castle
to watch them as long as they could.  At first
they could pick out here an armor and there a
banner and know that this was Galahad, this
Lancelot, and that Gawain.  But when they
were farther off they could not do this any
more; they could only see the big, bright spot
upon the road where the morning sunlight
struck upon the armors, and then their eyes
were tired with looking and something came
across them so that for a moment they could
not see at all.  The bright spot on the road
grew smaller and smaller.  It flashed and
twinkled and shivered.  Was it a cloud of dust
that rose now behind the knights and hid the
glimmer of their arms, or was there something
in the King's eyes again so that he could not
see it?  Once more he saw the far-off flash,
fainter now, and yet again, and then the dust
rose and there was no more to see.  And so the
noble fellowship of the Round Table passed
away from King Arthur and out of his sight
like a setting star.

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.. _`"The bright spot on the road grew smaller and smaller"`:

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   [Illustration: "The bright spot on the road grew smaller and smaller"
   (missing from book)]

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.. _`GAWAIN`:

.. _`"A pasture where a hundred and fifty bulls were feeding"`:

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   "A pasture where a hundred and fifty bulls were feeding"

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   CHAPTER X


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   GAWAIN

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All that day the knights of the Round Table
rode together, and in the evening they came to
a city where they all lodged for the night.  The
next morning they parted and rode different
ways.  In the days and the weeks and the
months that followed some of them had many
and strange adventures and some of them had
but few.  I could not possibly tell you, or even
remember for myself, all the wonderful things
that happened to all of them, but I can tell you
a part of the things that happened to a part of
them.

Gawain rode for a long time alone, till at
last, at an abbey where he stopped to spend
the night, he found his brother Gareth and his
cousin Uwain.  The next day they went on
their way together, and as they rode so they
met seven knights, who called to them to stop
and to tell who they were.

"We are knights of King Arthur's court,"
they answered, "and we are seeking for the
Holy Grail."

"Then it is well that we have met you," said
one of the seven knights.  "We are from the
Castle of Maidens.  A knight of King Arthur's
court drove us out of our castle and we have
sworn to kill all of King Arthur's knights whom
we meet.  We will begin with you."

Then all seven of them put their spears in rest
and charged against Gawain and Uwain and
Gareth.  But the three knights of the Round
Table fought so well that they soon beat their
seven enemies and wounded them and drove
them away.  The three knights parted then
and rode different ways.  And in the evening
Gawain came to the cell of a hermit and asked
him to let him stay for the night.  They talked
together and Gawain told the hermit who he
was and that he was seeking the Holy Grail.
The hermit knew, as everybody knew, all that
Arthur's famous knights had done, and he said:
"It is useless for you, Sir Gawain, to seek the
Holy Grail.  You will never find it.  It shows
itself only to the purest and the best.  You have
not been good enough and sound enough and
true enough in your life ever to see the Holy
Grail.  Ah, Gawain, Gawain, do not think that
you did such a great thing to-day, you and your
two fellows, when you beat those seven knights
from the Castle of Maidens.  For one knight
alone had beaten them all only a little while
before.  They had taken the Castle of Maidens
from the old lord who owned it, and they had
killed him and had held the castle for a long
time.  They were tyrants and murderers, and
Galahad came and drove them all out and gave
the castle to the daughter of its old lord.
Galahad did it alone, and now you three are proud
because you beat the seven cowards.  Knights
like Galahad will see the Holy Grail, not knights
like you, Gawain."

In the morning the hermit told Gawain that
if he hoped ever to come near the Holy Grail
he ought to do some penance for all the evils
of his life.  But Gawain answered: "No; we
knights make long journeys and we fight
dangerous battles.  Our lives are hard enough
without doing any other penance, and I will do
no other."  So he rode on his way.

And after that for weeks and months
Gawain rode by lonely ways and through deep
woods and over barren hills, and he met with
no adventure and scarcely with a living man.
Then he met another knight of the Round
Table, Sir Ector.  He was not the old Sir
Ector, Arthur's foster father, but another, the
brother of Lancelot.  "I am tired of this quest
of the Holy Grail," said Gawain.  "I have
ridden for months and I have found no
adventure, and it seems to me that all the people of
the country are dead."

"It is so with me," said Ector.  "I used to
find adventures enough, wherever I went, but
there are no more of them now."

The two went on together for a time and
everything seemed waste and deserted, as it
had seemed to each of them before.  They
came at last to a chapel that stood by the road.
It looked as sad and as deserted as the rest,
and it was falling into ruin, but they left their
horses and went into it and sat down to rest.
And while they sat there they both fell asleep,
and Gawain had a strange dream.  It seemed
to him that he saw a pasture where a hundred
and fifty bulls were feeding.  They were all
black but three, and those were white.  And
while he looked they all went away, and
afterward some of them came back, but many did
not come back.  Only one of the white ones
came, and the black ones all looked lean and weak.

When he awoke he told Ector of his dream,
and said: "It seems so strange to me that I
believe it has some meaning, and if we can
find some wise and holy man I shall tell it to
him and ask him what it means."

And as they rode on they met a young
squire and Gawain asked him if he knew of
any man such as he wished to find.  "Nacien,
the hermit," said the squire, "is a wise and
holy man.  He was a knight of King Arthur's
many years ago, and they say that he was one
of the best of them.  His cell is not far from here."

He showed them the way, and when they
found the hermit Gawain told him his dream
and asked him what it meant.  And the hermit
answered: "The pasture that you saw was the
Round Table and the bulls were the knights of
the Round Table.  They left the pasture, just
as the knights went away to seek the Holy
Grail.  The three that were white were three
knights who are so true and pure that they will
see the Holy Grail at last, but only one of them
will come back.  And the other knights, the
black bulls, will never see the Holy Grail,
because of the evil in their lives.  Many of them
will not come back, but some will come, and
they will be weary and worn with the quest."

Then Gawain said: "If what you say is
true we shall never find the Holy Grail, for I
fear that we must be counted among those
who have too much evil in their lives."

"Gawain," the hermit answered, "there are
a hundred knights of the Round Table as good
as you, who will never see the Holy Grail."

And Gawain and Ector rode on till they
came to a castle where there was a tournament.
The knights of the castle were against a great
crowd of other knights, and Gawain and Ector
joined in the tournament against the knights
of the castle.  And Gawain and Ector fought
so well that it was plain that their side was
winning the day.  Then of a sudden they saw
a new knight among those of the castle.  They
had not seen how he came or from where.  He
carried a white shield, with a red cross upon
it, and the rest of his arms were of the color of
fire.  Gawain charged against him first.  His
spear was broken against the white shield, but
the other knight used no spear.  He only
raised his sword and struck Gawain so that he
cut through his helmet and wounded his head
and threw him from his horse.  Ector drew
Gawain out of the field and took off his helmet,
and the knight with the white shield charged
against more of the knights who were against
those of the castle.  And everywhere he
overthrew them till the word was given that the
knights of the castle had won the day.  Then
he went away again as he had come, and no
one knew where.

The tournament was over and Gawain was
taken into the castle and laid upon a bed.
"Ector," he said, "do you know who the
knight was who wounded me?"

"Yes," said Ector, "I know him.  There is
only one who could do such things as I saw
him do.  It was Galahad.  His arms were like
Galahad's too, only when we saw him last he
had no shield."

"Ector," said Gawain, "it is Galahad who
will find the Holy Grail.  We are not like him,
and we cannot do the things that he can do.
We have gone far enough in this quest.  I
shall seek the Holy Grail no more."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LANCELOT`:

.. _`"Through woods where there were scarcely any paths to follow"`:

.. figure:: images/img-176.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Through woods where there were scarcely any paths to follow"

   "Through woods where there were scarcely any paths to follow"

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   LANCELOT

.. vspace:: 2

When the knights of the Round Table
parted, Lancelot, like the rest, rode for a time
alone.  Many times before now Lancelot had
sought adventures by himself.  For many years
he had wandered over England and he thought
that he knew the country well.  But now,
before he had ridden far, he was in places that
seemed strange to him, and soon he could not
tell at all where he was.  He crossed rivers
and rode over hills and plains and through
woods where there were scarcely any paths to
follow.  He saw fewer people than he had been
used to see, and many of the houses that he
passed were deserted and ruined.  Often wild
beasts crossed his track and he had to fight
with them.  At night he slept where he could,
sometimes in a ruined house or chapel, sometimes
on the ground, with his horse tied to a
tree near him.

And when he slept he had strange dreams.
Often in these dreams he thought that the
Holy Grail came near him.  He saw the rosy
light shine through the white covering, for that
covering of silk was always over it, but he
could never come close to it.  He saw others
who were wounded or sick come to it and touch
it and go away again strong and well, but he
had no strength to move or to speak.  It came
near to him and passed away and he lay before
it helpless.

When he awoke he would ride on, over more
of the hills and plains and rivers, fight again
with the wild beasts and lie down to sleep
again as he had done before.  Sometimes he
came to a hermit's cell.  Then he stayed all
night with the hermit and talked with him of
the court, of the knights, of his long journey,
and of the Holy Grail.  Sometimes one of the
hermits would say to him: "The Holy Grail is
not for such men as you to see.  You have been
counted long the best of knights, in your
strength and your deeds, yet there has been
evil in your life, too, and the Holy Grail will
not show itself to you in the way that it will to
others."

Then Lancelot would ride on his way feeling
sad.  He would remember the knight in the
flame-colored arms, who had done better in
that last tournament that they had than he had
ever done.  He would remember how that
knight had sat in the Siege Perilous; how his
own seat for all these years had been three
places off from the Siege Perilous, and how
those two other knights, Percivale and Bors,
had sat nearer to it than he.  And he would
think: "This quest is for such knights as those;
it is not for me."

Then some other wise man would say to him:
"Lancelot, the Holy Grail will show itself to
few, but you shall do better in this quest than
many others."  And then he rode on his way
again with new hope, though he did not know
of what, and with new heart.

One evening he was riding after the sun had
set, and he was thinking that he must soon find
a place to stay for the night.  Then he came
into a wood and all at once it was darker
around him than it had been out on the open
plain.  And before him, then, he saw dimly the
form of a knight coming toward him on a horse.
"Sir Knight," he said, "I have ridden in strange
paths for many days and I have met no knight,
and I have almost felt that I was forgetting
knightly ways.  Will you try one joust with me?"

The knight did not answer, but he put his
spear in the rest, and Lancelot did so too.
They spurred their horses and rode together
with a crash and Lancelot's spear struck full
upon the shield of the other knight and was
broken into splinters.  But the other spear
held, and it struck Lancelot's shield and threw
him off his horse and he lay upon the ground.
And so the great Lancelot, the glory of King
Arthur's court, was overthrown by the first
knight whom he met.  The other knight was
off his horse in an instant and Lancelot was on
his feet.  He drew his sword half out and then
stayed his hand and let the blade slide back
again into the sheath.  He bowed his head
before the other, who stood before him, and said:
"I know you, Sir Knight.  For these many
years I have jousted with all the best knights
of the world, and I know the stroke that every
one of them can give.  Tristram could never
strike any blow like that of yours, or Gawain or
Palamides or Percivale or Bors or Gareth.  I
have never felt it before, but I know that there
is no other such certain spear in the world as
this of yours, Galahad!  Galahad!"

And the other answered: "I know you, too,
for I have heard of you so long and of your
knightly deeds.  It is as if I had learned all
that I know of knighthood from you.  And it
was you, too, who made me a knight, and I feel
toward you, for all these things, as if you were
my father, Lancelot!  Lancelot!"

Then Lancelot said: "Galahad, I feel that
it is such knights as you who will see the Holy
Grail, and I feel that it would be better for me
to be with you.  May I go with you now,
wherever you go, and try to find the Holy
Grail with you?"

"No, Lancelot," Galahad answered, "no one
can go with me yet, but I will tell you this:
since we all parted I have talked with many
good and wise men, and they have told me
many things.  Of all who are seeking the Holy
Grail only three will see it openly, but of all
the rest who seek it you will be nearer to it
than any other."

Then Galahad mounted his horse again and
rode away through the wood, and it seemed to
Lancelot that a pale light shone back upon him
for a moment from the flame-colored armor,
and then he was gone.  And as soon as Lancelot
was alone a little breeze rustled the tops of
the trees above him.  They made only a low,
sighing sound at first, and then it grew louder
and clearer, and then it seemed to Lancelot
that it grew into a voice, and he thought that
the voice said: "Lancelot, go to the sea and go
into the ship that you find there."

Then the voice and the rustling of the trees
and the wind all died away, and Lancelot
mounted and rode on through the wood.  And
he had scarcely started when he came out of
the wood and saw the sea before him.  Far out
he could see great waves, with white crests
that flashed in the moonlight, but close to him
there was a little bay, with a rocky shore, and a
ship lay close to the rocks, so that he could
step on board.

Lancelot could see no one on the ship and it
had no sail, but as soon as he was on board it
left the rock and the bay and carried him out
to sea.  Then a feeling of strange rest and
happiness came over him.  He never knew
how long he was in the ship or whether he
slept there.  But when he next saw anything
clearly it was still night and the moon was still
shining.  The water was calm and there was
land all around.  The ship came to the shore
and stopped, and before him Lancelot saw the
gate of a castle.

He left the ship and went toward the gate,
and there he saw two great lions guarding it.
He drew his sword and kept on toward them,
and when he was near the gate something
struck his sword out of his hand.  Yet he felt,
he could not tell why, that there was no
danger from the lions, and he went on through the
gate.  The lions sprang at him as he passed,
but they did not touch him, and he went into
the castle.  He saw no people, but he went on
from room to room, through open doors, till at
last he came to one that was shut.

He tried to open the door, but he could not,
and then he heard music on the other side of it.
It was like the singing of a great choir, and the
singing or something else seemed to tell
Lancelot that the Holy Grail was in that room where
he could not go, and he knelt down before the
door and waited.  Then the door opened of
itself and a great light shone out and he could
hear the music more clearly.  He looked into
the chamber and in the middle of it he saw a
table of gold and silver, inlaid in beautiful
shapes, and on the table was the Holy Grail,
still with that white covering of silk.  Yet it
seemed to Lancelot that the rosy glow from
the Holy Grail that shone through the silk was
brighter and clearer than it had been when he
had seen it in the hall at Camelot, and brighter
than it had ever seemed to him in his dreams.
An old man stood beside the table and Lancelot
knew that he was the same who had led Galahad
into the hall that day when he had sat in
the Siege Perilous.

Then, while Lancelot looked, the old man
lifted up the Holy Grail, and at that Lancelot
started up and came into the chamber to get
nearer to it.  But suddenly it seemed to him
that a blast of fire struck him in the face.  The
burning air seemed all about him and through
him and it took away his breath and his strength
and he fell to the floor.  Then he felt no more
pain and he did not know where he was, but he
felt hands that took him up and carried him
away and put him in a bed.

The people of the Castle found that he was
not dead and they took care of him, and it was
twenty-four days before he awoke.  Then he
looked about him and asked them where he
was.  "Who are you?" they asked him.

"I am Lancelot of the Lake," he answered,
"and I am seeking the Holy Grail."

"This is the Castle of Carbonek," they said,
"and King Pelles, the keeper of the Grail, lives
here.  You have done well and nobly, Sir
Lancelot, and now you must go back to King
Arthur, for you will never see more of the
Holy Grail than you have seen here."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BORS`:

.. _`"He saw the water before him and a ship"`:

.. figure:: images/img-184.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "He saw the water before him and a ship"

   "He saw the water before him and a ship"

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BORS

.. vspace:: 2

Bors left his fellows of the Round Table and
rode all day alone.  Toward evening he met a
hermit.  These Grail-seeking knights were
always meeting hermits.  The country seems to
have been full of them.  And this one asked
Bors to come to his cell and rest there for the
night.  He had nothing to give to Bors to eat
and drink except bread and water, and while
they were making their supper of these the
hermit asked the knight to tell him who he was
and on what journey he was bound.

So Bors told him how the Holy Grail had
come into the hall at Camelot, but covered, so
that no one could see it.  And he told him
how all the knights had vowed that they would
seek for the Grail and try to see it, how they
had all left Camelot together, and how they
had parted now, and were all riding different
ways.  Then the hermit said: "Sir Bors, do
you know that this Holy Grail will not be
found by any knight who is not brave and
worthy in his deeds and pure and true in his
life?  Do you know that it will not show itself
except to those who seek for it faithfully,
thinking of nothing else, except such good and noble
things as they can do, and never forgetting it
because of any pleasure or of any gain?"

And Bors answered: "Yes, I know it."

"Then, Sir Bors," said the hermit, "will you
promise me one thing, to help you to find the
Holy Grail?"

"What shall I promise you?" said Bors.

"Promise me," said the hermit, "that you
will eat nothing but bread and that you will
drink nothing but water, till you see the Holy
Grail."

"Is it right," said Bors, "for me to promise
this?  How do you know that I shall ever see
the Holy Grail?"

"I know," the hermit answered, "that it is
such knights as you who will see it, if they seek
it in the right way."

"Then I will promise," said Bors.

In the morning Bors left the hermit and went
on his way.  And after a time he saw two knights
coming toward him, leading a third knight as
a prisoner.  They had him bound upon a horse
and they were beating him with thorns.  And
when they came nearer Bors saw that the knight
who was a prisoner was his brother Lionel.
Then, just as he was riding forward to help his
brother, he saw, on the other side of him, a
woman, and some robbers pursuing her.  Bors
stopped and for an instant did not know what
to do.  For, as a good knight, he ought to help
the woman, yet he feared that if he did that
his brother would be killed or led away where
he could not help him.

Yet it was only for a moment that Bors
doubted.  Then he remembered that his brother
was a knight and that he should be ready
always to suffer whatever came to him, and that
the woman needed him more.  So he turned
against the robbers and fought with them and
drove them away.  When he had done that
some knights came up who were the woman's
friends, and they thanked him for saving her
and begged him to come with them to the
castle of her father, who was a great lord and
lived near by.  But Bors said that he must
hasten now to help his brother, and he rode
the way that he had seen his brother and the
other two knights go.

He rode for a long time and saw nothing of
them, and then he met a man dressed like a
priest, riding on a black horse.  "Knight," said
the man, "where are you riding so fast?"

"I am trying," he said, "to find my brother,
Sir Lionel, for I saw two knights leading
him away as a prisoner, and I must help him."

"You need not go any farther," said the man,
"and you must be brave to bear what I have to
tell you.  Your brother is dead.  The knights
whom you saw have killed him.  Come with
me now and I will bring you to a castle near
here, where you can stay for the night, and
longer if you will."

So Bors rode with him, and as they went
along he asked him if he was a priest.  He said
that he was, and then Bors asked him if he had
done right to help the woman instead of his
brother.  "No," the priest answered, "you did
wrong.  Your brother has been killed because
of what you did, and that woman was nothing
to you."

Then Bors was sadder than before, and he
said no more till they came to the castle to
which the priest was leading him.  There a
woman, young and beautiful, the lady of the
castle, came down to meet him, followed by
many others, all young and beautiful too.  They
welcomed him and led him to the hall, where a
feast was spread on the table, and they begged
him to eat and drink, and then to stay with
them and join in their games and their dances
and their feasts.  But Bors answered: "I am
one of the knights who are seeking the Holy
Grail and I must not turn away from my quest
for any pleasures, and I have promised to eat
nothing but bread and to drink nothing but
water till I see the Holy Grail."

"The Holy Grail?" said the priest.  "Why
are you seeking it?  Do you know why, or shall
I tell you?  It is because you know that few will
find it.  It is because you wish for the glory of
being thought better than other men.  Is this a
good or a noble wish?  I tell you it is a proud
and wicked one.  Forget it and stay here with
us and be happy and be like other men."

And the lady of the castle said: "Sir Bors,
I knew that you were coming here and it was
for you that I made this feast.  Stay here with
us now or I shall kill myself, and my death will
be by your fault, as your brother's was.  Say
that you will stay with us, or I will go up to
the top of the castle tower and throw myself down."

And again Bors did not know what he ought
to do.  He could not forget that the hermit
had told him that he must not think of pleasures
while he was seeking the Holy Grail, and
he could not forget that he had promised to eat
nothing but bread and drink nothing but water
till he should see it.  And, as he cast down his
eyes in thinking, he saw the cross-shaped hilt
of his sword.  And, as if he suddenly knew
that that could help him, he caught it and held
it up before him and before them all.

And as he held it up he heard a great cry
among the women, and the priest screamed as
if an arrow had struck him.  And then, too,
Bors heard a great wind sweep over the castle.
It was only for an instant, and in that instant
there was a crash of thunder and a blinding
flash of lightning.  The next instant the castle
and the priest and the women were all gone.
Bors was standing alone on a broad plain,
holding up the cross-shaped hilt of his sword.  The
only living thing near him was his own horse.
A cold wind was sweeping over the plain.  In
the west there was a dull, red glow of sunset
and above it there was one pale star.

Bors mounted his horse and rode away to
find a place to stay for the night.  When he
had ridden some way he heard a bell and came
to an abbey.  He knocked at the gate and a monk
came and opened it.  When the monk had let
him in, Bors asked him if there was any wise
man here who could tell him the meaning of
all the adventures that he had had.  "Our
abbot is a wise man," the monk answered.
"Perhaps he can tell you."

So he led Bors to the abbot and Bors told
him everything that had befallen him since he
left the knights of the Round Table.  "And it
has been so strange," he said, "that I do not
know whether all that I have done has been
right or wrong."

"You have done right, Sir Bors," the abbot
answered.  "It was right for you to leave your
brother and save the woman from the robbers.
Your brother is a man and a knight and he
must take whatever adventure comes to him.
It was your duty to help the woman who
needed you, before you tried to help another
knight, even though he was your brother.
And your brother is not dead.  Gawain met
him and rescued him.  The man in the dress of
a priest, who told you that he was dead, was
not a priest.  He was a wicked enchanter.  He
told you that you had done wrong and he took
you to the castle where the feasting was, to
make you forget the Holy Grail.  But you
were too faithful to your promise and too firm
for him, and I am sure, Sir Bors, that you will
be one of those who will see the Holy Grail."

Bors went on his way again in the morning
and soon he met a man who told him that there
was to be a tournament at a castle not far off.
So Bors went toward the castle, for he thought
that at the tournament he might find his
brother or some of his other friends of the
Round Table.  And as he came near the castle
he saw his brother sitting beside the road, and
his horse standing near.  Bors had not felt so
glad since he left Camelot to seek the Holy
Grail as he did now to see his brother alive and
well.  He got off his horse and went toward
him, but Lionel only started up angrily and got
on his horse and made ready his spear.  "Bors,"
he cried, "you ran away from me to help some
strange woman, and you would have let my
enemies kill me.  It was the unkindest thing that
ever one brother did to another.  Now get
on your horse and defend yourself or I shall
kill you where you stand."

But Bors would not move.  He begged his
brother not to do so wicked a thing as to
murder him or to make him fight with him, but
Lionel would not listen.  When he saw that
Bors would not defend himself he drove his
horse against him and tried to throw him down
and ride over him.  But Bors caught the
horse's bridle, and then Lionel dismounted and
drew his sword and came against him.  Then
there was nothing for Bors to do but to draw
his own sword and defend himself.  But as he
lifted his sword he heard, or it seemed to him
that he heard, a strange voice, that rang in his
ears and said: "Bors, do not strike your
brother, for if you do you will kill him."

And then all at once they could not see each
other, for there was a cloud between them, all
of fire, as it seemed, and it scorched their faces
and dazzled their eyes.  And Bors heard the
voice again, saying: "Bors, leave this place
and go to the sea, for Percivale is there in a
ship waiting for you."

So Bors turned away and took his horse and
rode for a long way, and then he saw the water
before him and a ship, all covered with canopies
of white silk, lying beside the shore.  And
he went on board the ship, and as soon as he
was there it left the shore and went swiftly out
into the sea.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PERCIVALE`:

.. _`"'Knight,' she said, 'what are you doing here?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-193.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Knight,' she said, 'what are you doing here?'"

   "'Knight,' she said, 'what are you doing here?'"

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   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   PERCIVALE

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This was the adventure that Percivale had.
When he had parted from his fellows and was
riding alone he met a company of twenty
knights.  They stood across his path and
asked him who he was and whence he came.
"I am Sir Percivale," he answered, "and I
come from the court of King Arthur."

"Then we will kill you," they cried, "for we
are enemies of King Arthur and of all his
knights."

Then they dropped the points of their spears
and rushed upon him, and he struck down the
first that came with his spear.  But half a
dozen of the others came upon him all at
once, and some of the rest killed his horse, so
that he was thrown down and was helpless
among them.  Then, when he thought that his
last moment was surely come, he heard the
sound of a horse's hoofs and then a shout, and
then he saw the flash of a bright, flame-colored
armor coming toward him.  In an instant the
knight who wore it was among them, and he
had struck down some of them with his spear,
and then he had drawn his sword and he was
laying about him with it.  No one who felt
one stroke of that sword stayed to feel
another.  Some fell and could not rise, and
others turned and fled, and soon there was none
left to do any harm to Percivale.  Then the
knight in the flame-colored arms went away
too, as fast as his horse could go, and all that
Percivale saw of him was a last glimmer of his
armor among the trees.

Percivale knew that this was Galahad, and
he wished that he could follow him and go with
him on his quest of the Holy Grail.  But he
had no horse and Galahad was out of sight,
and he could do no more than go as fast as he
could on foot the way that Galahad had gone.
And so he went on, not hoping to overtake
Galahad, and scarcely knowing what he did,
till night came on and it grew so dark that he
could not see his way, and he was so weary
and so faint that he felt that he could go no
farther.  Then he sank down, just where he
was, upon the ground, and slept.

When he awoke it was midnight.  The
moon was shining, and by the dim light he saw
a girl standing beside him.  It was she who
had awakened him.  "Knight," she said, "what
are you doing here?  Have you nothing better
to do than to lie asleep beside the road?
Where is your horse?"

"My horse was killed," he answered, "by
some knights who fell upon me and nearly
killed me too.  Then I came so far without
him and grew so weary that I sank down and
slept here where you have found me."

"I will give you a horse," the girl said, "if
you will take him from me."

"There is nothing that I need," said Percivale,
"so much as a horse, and if you can find
me one I shall be grateful to you."

The girl went away and soon she came back
leading a great, black horse, with rich
trappings, and she told Percivale to take him.
The instant that Percivale was in the saddle
the horse was away like the wind.  Percivale
could not stop him or turn him.  He went
where he liked, and Percivale was sure that in
all his life he had never ridden so fast.  No,
nor a tenth part as fast, for sometimes, as this
mad horse carried him along, he saw places
that he knew, and within an hour he saw some
that he knew were a day's journey apart.
And all at once he heard a dull roar and saw
the ocean before him.  The horse was going
straight into it, as it seemed, and when Percivale
saw that, he drew his sword and held it by
the blade and struck the horse's neck with the
cross-shaped hilt.  Then the horse gave a great
leap and threw Percivale off his back.  He fell
on the very edge of the water and the horse
plunged into it.  And where he disappeared
there sprang up a great flame, bright blue, and
it went out and left a thick, black smoke
behind it.  The wind blew the smoke away, and
there was nothing more to see but the great
waves rolling toward the shore and dashing
against the rocks.

Then the weariness and faintness came upon
Percivale once more, and he lay down there
on the rough rocks of the sea-shore and slept
again.  It was morning when he awoke.  As
he looked around him he saw that the rocks
about him were so high that they made a
mountain and the water seemed to be all
around it, or nearly so.  And as he was
looking for a way to get back to the mainland he
saw coming toward him a great serpent,
carrying a young lion in its mouth.  An old lion
was following, and it came up and began to
fight with the serpent, but it could not make it
drop the young lion.  Then Percivale thought
that of the two beasts he liked the lion better,
and that he would try to help it.  So he drew
his sword and put his shield before him and
ran to the serpent and cut off its head.

And the old lion went to the cub and found
that it was not much hurt, and then it came to
Percivale and licked his hand, as a dog would,
and tried to thank him for saving the cub.
After that it carried the cub away, but in a
little while it came back and stayed with
Percivale all day, and at night, when Percivale lay
down to sleep, the lion watched beside him.

The next morning Percivale saw a ship coming
toward the land.  It came close to the rock
where he was and he could see no one in it but
one old man, in the dress of a priest.  It had
been so long since Percivale had had any friend
but the lion that he was glad to see the priest
and he told him who he was and how he had
come there, and that he did not know how to
get away from the place.

"Do not try to find any more adventures
now," the priest answered, "but come into this
ship and wait in it for the adventures that will
come to you."

So Percivale went on board the ship and at
once it started out into the sea.  He did not
see the priest again and he could not tell where
he had gone, but he could see the lion still
standing on the shore and looking after him,
till the ship had gone so far that he could no
longer make it out.  And Percivale must have
slept again in the ship, though he did not know
how long.  But he awoke and saw a man
bending over him, and the man was Bors.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GALAHAD`:

.. _`"'It was King Evelake's shield'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-198.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'It was King Evelake's shield'"

   "'It was King Evelake's shield'"

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   GALAHAD

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When Galahad left Camelot he had no shield.
He had carried none in the tournament and he
had done better without one than any of the
other knights.  He still had none when the
knights parted.  He rode alone for four days
without any adventure.  It was then that he
came to an abbey and went in to spend the
night.  Another knight of the Round Table had
come there before him, and as they sat talking
together the monks told them of a shield that
they had.  It had been in the abbey for many
years, they said, and it had been foretold that
no one except the best knight of the world
should ever carry it without coming to some harm.

"I will take that shield to-morrow morning,"
said the knight, "and see what comes of it.  I
do not think myself the best knight of the
world, but I do not fear any adventure that
may befall me.  And you, Sir Galahad—if you
will, you may wait here for a little while to
know if I come to any harm, and then I am
sure that you can bear this shield, if I cannot."

"It shall be as you say," said Galahad, "and
I will wait to hear from you."

In the morning the knight asked for the
shield, and the monks brought it to him.  It
was white, with a red cross upon it.  The
knight took it and rode away with his squire,
and Galahad waited.  He did not wait long,
for before noon the knight was brought back
to the abbey so badly wounded that they could
scarcely tell at first whether he would live or
die.  The squire came with him and brought
the shield.  He brought it straight to Galahad
and said: "Sir Galahad, we met a knight who
fought with my lord and wounded him as you
see.  Then the knight told me to bring the
shield to you and to say that no one but you
ought to carry it."

"Then tell me," said Galahad to the monks,
"what this shield is and why no one may use it
but me."

"It was King Evelake's shield," one of the
monks answered.  "In the time of Joseph of
Arimathæa, Evelake was King of the City of
Sarras.  He bore this shield in a great battle
that he fought, and it was Joseph who made
this red cross upon it for him.  Afterward he
came to England with Joseph.  When he died
the shield was left here in this abbey and
Joseph foretold that it should never be borne
with safety by anyone till the best knight of
the world should come."

When Galahad heard that, he took the shield
and made ready to go on his way.  But first he
asked the monks about his fellow of the Round
Table, and they told him that he had been
nearly killed, but that they could cure him.

I have told you already some of the things
that Galahad did.  You know how he overcame
both Lancelot and Gawain, how he drove
the murderers out of the Castle of Maidens, and
how he saved Percivale from his enemies.  It
was after all these things that he was sleeping
one night in the cell of a hermit, and a woman
came to the door and called to him.  The
hermit opened the door and she said to him: "I
must speak to the knight who is here with you."

Then the hermit awoke Galahad and told
him that there was a woman at the door who
said that she must speak to him.  So Galahad
went to the door and she told him that he must
put on his armor and come with her.  Galahad
did not know who she was or what she wanted
of him, but something made him feel sure that
he ought to do what she said.  He put on his
armor and rode with her for the rest of the
night and all the next day, and then, as it was
getting toward night again, they came to a castle.

The lady of the castle welcomed them and
told Galahad that he must eat and sleep a little
and then be ready to ride again.  It was still
night when they came and woke him, and he
put on his armor and rode again with the
woman who had brought him to the castle.
It was only a little way that they rode this
time and then they came to the sea-side and
saw a ship, all covered with canopies of white
silk.  They went on board and found Percivale
and Bors.  As soon as Galahad and the woman
were in the ship it left the land and went
straight out into the open sea.

When the three knights had greeted one
another and when each had told the others
something of where he had been and what he had
done since they had parted last, Galahad said:
"I should never have found you here if this
woman had not brought me and shown me the
way, and I am sure that you must thank her as
much as I for bringing us together."

Then the woman said: "Percivale, do you
know who I am?"

"No," said Percivale, "I do not know you."

"I am your sister," she said, "whom you
have not seen since you first went to King
Arthur's court."

Then they all stood together, talking and
looking out upon the dim sea, till slowly they
began to see it more plainly and the sky grew
lighter and the stars faded away in it, and a faint
and then a brighter glow rose in the east and the
day came.  When it was fully light Percivale's
sister said: "Come now and let me show you
what there is in this ship that you have not seen."

She led them to another part of the ship and
there they saw a sword in a scabbard.  The
hilt of the sword was set with jewels and the
scabbard seemed to be of serpent's skin.  It
was all rich and beautiful except the girdle
which was fastened to it, and that was of hemp
and looked poor and weak.  "Galahad," said
Percivale's sister, "this sword is for you, and
I must tell you how long it has been waiting
for you.  It was King David's sword, and his
son, King Solomon, built this ship and put this
sword in it and said that it should be for the
best knight of the world and for no other.
King Solomon was the wisest man that ever
lived, yet he had a wife who in one thing was
wiser than he.  For she was to make a girdle
for this sword, and she made this poor one of
hemp that you see.  When the King saw it he
was angry and he told her that such a sword as
this ought to have the best girdle in the world,
not the worst.  'That is true, my lord,' she
answered, 'but I had nothing that was fit for the
best girdle in the world, and so I have made
this one.  And this one shall stay on the sword
till it is time for the best knight of the world
to come and take it.  Then the sword shall
have a new girdle.  It shall be made by another
woman, a young maiden, and she shall make it
of what she loves best and is proudest of in all
the world.'  And when Solomon had built the
ship and put the sword in it, and his wife had
put the girdle of hemp on the sword, they saw
the ship, all of itself, move out to sea, and it
passed out of their sight and they never heard
of it again.  And ever since King Solomon's
time this ship has floated on the sea, and now I
have brought you to it, Galahad, to take this
sword which is yours."

"This is a wonderful story that you have
told us," Galahad said.  "How have you learned
these things?"

"I cannot tell you," she said.  "It seems to
me that I know them without learning them.
It is the Holy Grail, I think, that has given me
the knowledge of them, but I cannot tell you
how; only, when I have seen the Holy Grail,
I have thought that all at once I knew many
wonderful things that I did not know before."

"The Holy Grail?" said Galahad.  "You
have seen it then?"

"Yes," she answered, "many times.  You
knights go far to seek the Holy Grail, but it
has come to me without my seeking it.  Now,
Galahad, take your sword, for soon we must
leave this ship."

"But where is the new girdle for the sword?"
said Galahad.  "It seems to me that this old
one of hemp will scarcely hold it.  And who is
the maiden who is to make the new girdle?"

"I am she," said Percivale's sister, "and I
have made the girdle and have brought it.  It
is made of my own hair.  It was long and
beautiful once, like fine threads of gold, and I
was proud of it and loved it more than
anything else in the world.  But when I had seen
the Holy Grail and when I knew of this sword
and knew that it was I who must make the new
girdle for it, then I cut off my hair and wove it
into a girdle."

.. _`"'I CUT OFF MY HAIR AND WOVE IT INTO A GIRDLE'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-204.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "I CUT OFF MY HAIR AND WOVE IT INTO A GIRDLE."

   "I CUT OFF MY HAIR AND WOVE IT INTO A GIRDLE."

Then she took the girdle out of a casket that
she had brought, and it was indeed like a broad
band of soft gold.  And she fastened it upon
the sword and bound the sword upon Galahad's side.

They saw that the ship was coming near the
land again and soon it touched the shore.
They all went on shore, and, when they had
gone a little way they saw a great castle before
them.  When the three knights and Percivale's
sister came near the castle, men came out of it
and told them that they could not pass till they
had done the custom of the castle.  And the
custom of the castle was that the maiden must
give a silver dish full of her blood to cure a
sick lady.  The three knights would have
fought the men of the castle and tried to pass
by force, but Percivale's sister would not let
them do it.  "The lady of the castle shall have
my blood," she said, "and it will cure her."

"But if you lose so much blood," said Galahad,
"you may die yourself."

"Yes," she answered, "I shall die, but it is
no matter for that.  All that I had to live for
was to give you the sword that you have, to
make the girdle for it of my hair, and to cure
this lady.  When I have done that I shall have
done all that I had to do.  Now let me tell you
what to do when I am dead.  When I am dead,
do not bury me here, but put me in the ship
that we have come in.  Leave me in it alone
and go on your way.  You will see me again
sooner than you think, but there is something
still for you to do here.  You must go to the
Castle of Carbonek to heal King Pelles's wound.
After that you three must bring the Holy Grail
to the City of Sarras.  I shall be there as soon
as you and there you must bury me.  And two
of you will not live long after that, and you
will be buried beside me.  For you, Galahad,
and you, my brother Percivale, will stay there
with me, and then you, Bors, must come back
to England and tell the King and the rest all
that we have seen and done.  Now let us talk
of it no more.  The Holy Grail has shown me
all that I must do and neither you nor I must
try to change it."

All this, you may be sure, made the three
knights very sad, but Percivale's sister had
shown them and had told them so much that
was wonderful that they did not dare to
disobey her.  They all stayed in the castle that
night.  In the morning Percivale's sister gave
the silver dish full of her blood and it cured the
lady of the castle, and soon after that
Percivale's sister died.

The three knights carried her to the shore
and put her into the ship again, as she had told
them to do.  As soon as they were on the
shore again, the ship started out to sea and
they stood and watched it.  It went away from
them swiftly and they looked till its canopies
of white silk seemed no more than the wings of
a sea-bird resting on the water, and then, with
a last fading flash in the morning sunlight on
the edge of the ocean and the sky, it was gone.
Yet still they watched and they saw a little
brown spot of mist rise up where the ship had
vanished.  It grew larger and came toward
them and spread over the sky and shut off the
water from their eyes and it wrapped them all
around.  They could scarcely see the path
before them as they turned to go away.  The
cold, damp, sad mist cloud was over all the
land and the ocean, only before them there was
a pale, silvery shimmer of the sun still shining
on the cloud.





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.. _`THE CITY OF SARRAS`:

.. _`The Dove with the golden censer`:

.. figure:: images/img-208.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The Dove with the golden censer

   The Dove with the golden censer

.. vspace:: 2

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   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CITY OF SARRAS

.. vspace:: 2

The knights went to the castle and found
horses, and mounted and rode toward the
Castle of Carbonek.  The silvery shimmer of the
sun upon the mist grew brighter.  The mist
itself grew thinner and lighter and at last it all
melted away into the clear air, and the sun
shone warmly upon the fields and the woods,
which the morning mist had left cool and fresh
and dewy.  The knights did not speak much to
one another.  They were thinking too much of
what had passed.  And so they rode till late in
the day, and then they saw the Castle of
Carbonek before them.

Everything there was as if they had been
expected.  The porters opened the gate for them,
King Pelles's men led them to chambers, where
they took off their armor, and then to the great
hall, and there they found places ready for
them at the table and the table laid, though
with no food upon it.  When they had sat
down, King Pelles was brought in and was
placed at the table, too.  "Galahad," he said,
"no one could be more glad to see you than I
am, for I know that you have come to cure my
wound.  I have suffered with it every day for
all these many years; yes, since long before you
were born.  And all that time I have known that
no one could cure it but you, and so I have waited
and waited for you to grow up and be a knight
and go out in the quest of the Holy Grail, for
I knew that it was not till then that you could
come to cure me.  I have tried to be patient all
these years, but now, Galahad, that you have
come, it seems to me that I could not bear this
wound another day."

When the King had said this, the dove that
carried the little golden censer in its peak flew
into the hall, as it had done when Bors was
there before, long ago.  The thin smoke floated
through the room and it was filled again with
that sweet odor that Bors remembered.  Then
a door of the hall opened and an old man—the
same whom Bors had seen before, the same
who had brought Galahad to the Siege
Perilous—came in.  He carried the Holy Grail
itself, and this time there was no covering of silk
upon it.  It was not the old rosy glow that
came from the cup now.  The blood that was
in it shone like one clear, red gem, resting in
the pure crystal of the cup.  It shone brighter,
the knights thought, than any light they had
ever seen before, yet it did not hurt their eyes
when they looked at it.  The beams that came
from it made a broad halo of beautiful colors
all about it, and the light that it shed through
the room was like the light of day, only brighter
and clearer, and everything that was seen in it
looked finer and more beautiful.

The old man held the Holy Grail high up
above his head for them to see it better, and
then he put it on the little table of gold and
silver that was in the room.  Another door of
the hall was opened and four boys came in
and brought the spear with the drops of blood
flowing from the point.  They came and stood
with it before the old man and he looked at the
spear and then he looked at Galahad.  Galahad
rose from the table and went to the spear and
touched the blood on the point of it with his
fingers.  Then he went to the King and touched
the wound in his side with the blood, and at
once the wound was healed.  The King stood
up for a moment and felt that his strength and
his health had come back to him, and then he
sank down again in his place and scarcely
moved, but gazed at the Holy Grail and at the
spear and at Galahad.

"Galahad," said the old man, "you have
done now all that you had to do here.  You
have seen the Holy Grail and you have healed
the King's wound.  To-morrow you must leave
this land, and the Holy Grail will leave it too.
Go to-morrow, with your two fellows, to the
sea.  There you will find your ship.  You
must go in it to the City of Sarras and you
must take the Holy Grail with you.  When
you are there, you will know what more you
have to do."

The old man lifted the Holy Grail again and
went out of the hall with it, and the boys who
carried the spear followed him.  The table was
covered with food and wine now and they all
ate and drank, and then they all left the hall
and slept till morning.

In the morning Galahad and Percivale and
Bors left the Castle of Carbonek and went to
the shore.  And there, as the old man had said,
they found a ship.  As soon as they were on
board they saw that the Holy Grail was there
before them.  It stood on the table of gold and
silver and the covering of white silk was over
it again.

The knights did not know how long they
were in that magic ship, or what way or how
far they went.  They were moving swiftly
always, they slept and they awoke, and they saw
sunlight and moonlight and starlight.  The
Holy Grail was always with them and they
never felt hunger or cold or weariness.  And
while they were in the ship Galahad told
Percivale and Bors that he had prayed that he
might leave this world whenever he wished it,
and he knew that his prayer would be answered.
And one morning, just as the sun was rising,
they saw a low bank of white mist far before
them, and above the mist they could see the
pale, silvery lines of spires and towers and
domes, and they knew that this was the City of
Sarras.  The ship brought them quickly nearer
and nearer, and as they came into the harbor
they saw another ship going in before them.
It was all covered with white, and they knew
that it was the ship that carried Percivale's sister.

When they came to the shore they took hold
of the table with the Holy Grail upon it to
carry it out of the ship.  But it was too heavy
for them and they looked about to find some
one to help them.  The nearest man was an old
cripple who sat begging.  Galahad called to
him and told him to come and help them carry
the table.  "I cannot help you," he said; "it is
many years since I could even stand, except
with crutches."

"No matter for that," said Galahad, "come
and do your best."  And the old cripple came
and helped them, and he was as strong and as
well as any man.  They carried the table and
the Holy Grail to the cathedral and left them
before the altar, and then they came back to the
shore and brought Percivale's sister out of the
ship and up to the cathedral too, and buried
her there.

When the King of Sarras heard of the
strange knights who had come and of the cripple
who had been healed, he sent for the knights
and asked them who they were and whence
they came.  Now this King was a tyrant, and
when Galahad had told him all about the Holy
Grail he began to be afraid of these knights, for
he feared that they would have more power
over the people than he had himself.  So he
sent all three of them to prison.  But as soon
as they were in prison the Holy Grail came to
them of itself, and it stayed with them and fed
them, as it had fed Joseph of Arimathæa, when
he was in prison.  And, like him, they scarcely
knew how long they were there.  But when
they had been in prison for a year the King
was sick and felt that he was going to die, and
then he began to have worse fears than before.

So he sent for the three knights again and
told them that he had done wrong in putting
them in prison and begged them to forgive
him.  "We forgive you," Galahad answered;
"you had no power to harm us, for the Holy
Grail was always with us."

Then the King said to Galahad: "I am sure
that I shall die soon and I wish that you might
be King here after me, for I know that my
people could have no better king than you."

So it was agreed, and soon after that the
King died and Galahad was crowned in his
place.  When Galahad was King the Holy
Grail was put before the altar in the cathedral
again and Galahad had a chest made to cover
it.  And every day he and Percivale and Bors
went to the cathedral to pray before it.

And one day, when Galahad had been King
of Sarras for a year, he told Percivale and Bors
that the time had come for him to leave this
world, and they must come with him to the
cathedral now for the last time.  So they went to
the cathedral together and they saw an old man
kneeling at the altar.  He was the same old
man whom they had seen so many times before,
who had been made to live so far beyond his
time by the power of the Holy Grail, Joseph
of Arimathæa.  On the altar before him lay the
spear with the drops of blood flowing from its
point.

The three knights knelt before the altar,
Galahad nearer to it than the others, and they were
there for a long time.  Then the old man rose
and came to the chest where the Grail was and
took it out and held it up before them, and the
light that shone from the blood that was in it,
through the crystal of the cup, was greater and
stronger than ever.  The whole cathedral was
bright with it.  It streamed up among the
arches of the roof and lighted old pictures that
were painted there.  For years before they had
scarcely been seen, they were so dim with time
and with dust and with the smoke of incense.
Now, with the light of the Holy Grail upon
it, the place was again a piece of Heaven, filled
with wonderful forms.  There was Elijah, in
his chariot of fire; there were saints and angels;
and all about them and among them there were
little stars of gold, that glowed and twinkled
in the new brightness like the stars of the real
Heaven.

The old man set the Grail upon the altar and
came to Galahad and touched his hand and
kissed him.  Then all at once the church grew
dark and Percivale and Bors could see nothing
but the Grail and the spear upon the altar and
the old man who stood before it.  He took the
Grail and the spear and then he seemed to rise
and to go farther from them, though they could
not see how he went.  It seemed to them, too,
that Galahad was with him, and they did not
see that the form of Galahad still lay before
them on the steps of the altar.

In this way they watched for a long time and
then Percivale said to Bors: "Do you not see,
far off there in the sky, as it seems, Galahad
himself, with his crown and his royal robes,
holding the Holy Grail in his hands?"

"I cannot see that," Bors answered; "the
window of the choir is open, but the air outside
is growing darker.  I see a little cloud that the
setting sun has turned all to crimson and to
gold, and that is all."

After a time Percivale said again: "Bors, do
you not see now?  He is farther away, but still
I can see the shining of the Holy Grail."

And Bors answered: "Even the little cloud
is gone now, and where it was a bright star is
shining.  I can see no more."

And again Percivale said: "I hear music—trumpets
and harps and voices—and I see Galahad
still, and plainer than I saw him before,
holding up the Holy Grail.  Do you hear
nothing, Bors, and see nothing?"

"I heard a loud wind," Bors answered.  "It
passed us and blew against the window of the
choir and shut it.  I cannot see the sky any
more, but in the colored glass of the window I
see Joseph of Arimathæa, holding up the Holy
Grail, but I cannot see him clearly, it is
growing so dark outside."

And still, though they did not see it then, the
form of Galahad lay before them on the steps
of the altar.  And again there was no King of
Sarras.  They buried him, Percivale and Bors,
in the cathedral, beside Percivale's sister.  And
after that Percivale found a cell outside the
city and lived there as a hermit for a time, and
then he died.  Bors stayed with him till then,
and he buried him in the cathedral, with his
sister and Galahad.  And when he had done
that Bors left the City of Sarras and went on
his way back toward England, to tell King
Arthur the last of the story of the Holy Grail.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`STORIES OF STRANGE STONES`:

.. _`The Cheesewring`:

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   :alt: The Cheesewring

   The Cheesewring

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   STORIES OF STRANGE STONES

.. vspace:: 2

What I wanted to find was Dozmare Pool.
I had heard about it and I had read about it,
and I wanted to see it.  I studied the maps and
the time-tables.  We had to go from Penzance
to Exeter, and I thought that if we got off the
train at Liskeard we could find a carriage to
take us to Dozmare Pool and back in time to
catch another train and get to Exeter before
night.  Then it turned out that Helen's mother
did not care about going to Dozmare Pool at all.

You may never have noticed it, but one of
the best ways in the world for two people to
get along together is for each of them to have
his own way always.  So it took us less than
a minute to settle that Helen's mother should
just stay in the train till it got to Exeter and
wait there for us.  Helen was young enough to
feel an ambition to see and do as much as
possible, instead of as little as possible, and she
said that she would go to see Dozmare Pool too.
And so Helen and I got off the train at
Liskeard and stood on the platform and saw it go
on and watched it till it was out of sight.  Then
we felt that we were alone in a strange land,
for we knew almost as little about Liskeard as
we did about the moon, and how could we
tell that we should be able to get to Dozmare
Pool at all?  We left the station and began to
look around.  We did not have to look far.
Just across the road there was a little hotel
called the Stag.  We went in and the landlord
did not seem quite so surprised to see us
as some of the hotel keepers we had met
before.  We asked him if we could have luncheon
and he said we could.  Then we asked him if
he knew where Dozmare Pool was.  That made
him stare a little, but he said he did.  Next we
asked him if he could find a carriage and a
driver to take us there.  "Yes," he said, "and
I suppose you will want to go to the
Cheesewring too."

"What is the Cheesewring?"

"It's some very curious stones, sir; visitors
almost always go to see it, sir."

"Is it near Dozmare Pool?"

"Oh, it's a matter of three miles, sir."

"Shall we have time to go to both places
and get back so as to catch a train for Exeter?"

"Oh, yes, sir; you'll have plenty of time, I think."

"Very well, then, we will go to the Cheesewring."

That is the way with hotel keepers in such
places.  They have certain sights that they
expect everybody to go to see, but they never can
understand why you want to see anything else.
And of course it doesn't really matter whether
they understand or not.  Still I was willing to
take the landlord's advice.  I had read
something about the Cheesewring before and I was
glad to find that we had such a good chance to see it.

When we had finished luncheon the carriage
and the driver were ready, and in a few minutes
Liskeard was behind us.  The country was of
the same pretty sort that we had seen so many
times before, with tall trees, that hung over the
road, and fields and high hedges.  They were
not wonderful scenes that we were riding
through, but just fresh and bright and lovely scenes.

There was a place where, for a short way, we
rode along beside a little brook, and even from
the carriage, as we passed, we could see the
trout swimming in it.  The driver told us that
the boys of a school near-by often caught the
trout by letting down wide-mouthed bottles,
with bait in them, into the water.  The fish
would go into the bottles and the boys would
pull them up by the strings.  This was a way
of catching trout that I had never heard of,
but it seemed likely enough that it might be
done, with a stream so full of them as this one was.

I tried, as usual, to get the driver to tell us
stories.  "What sort of place is this Dozmare
Pool, where we are going?" I said.  "I have
heard that there are some very wonderful
stories about it."

"I can't say, sir," he answered; "I never
heard any stories about it in particular."

This was just the answer that I expected.  It
is not at all easy to get people to tell you the
stories about the places where they live, even
when they know them.  I don't know why it
is.  Perhaps they are afraid of being laughed
at, if the stories happen to be a little hard to
believe, and perhaps they feel that the stories
belong to them and to their neighbors, and they
do not like to give them to strangers.

But one of the best ways to get them to tell
you a story is to tell them one.  I thought that
this way was worth trying, so I said: "I am
surprised at that.  I thought everybody about
here must know stories about Dozmare Pool.
Why, I was reading only the other day about a
giant named Tregagle, who lived about the
pool and had a great deal of trouble.  He was
once a wicked steward, I think, who killed his
master and mistress and got the property that
belonged to their child, and for that he was
condemned to empty Dozmare Pool with a
limpet shell.  Of course he never could do it,
but he had to keep working at it forever.  And
then, as if that was not enough, the story said
that sometimes the devil used to come after
him, and the only way that he could get away
from the devil was to run fifteen miles to the
Roche Rocks and put his head in at the window
of a chapel there, and then the devil could not
harm him.  And when the devil got tired of
waiting and went away, poor old Tregagle had
to come back and go to work again at
emptying the pool with his limpet shell."

"I never heard of Tregagle," said the driver,
"but the way I heard the story was that it was
the devil himself who had to empty the pool
with a limpet shell, and he did it.  Then he was
condemned to bind the sand and mike the binds
of the sime, and that he couldn't do."

So the driver did know a story after all.  I
must tell you just here that this driver had a very
queer way of speaking, as it seemed to us.  I
am not quite sure whether it was a Cornish way
or not.  It was harder to understand than any
other speech that we had heard in Cornwall.
Liskeard is almost on the edge of Devonshire
and this man's talk, too, had something that
sounded like London in it.  I try to tell you the
things that he said in every-day English, and
not just the way he said them.  But I have
tried, too, to give you a few words just as they
sounded, to show you what they were like.
But I feel that I have not quite done it.  When
the driver told us that the devil was condemned
to "bind the sand and mike the binds of the
sime," Helen and I stared at each other and
could not make out what he meant at first.  But
we soon thought it out.  The words that he had
tried to say were "bind the sand and make the
binds of the same," and what he meant was, that
the devil was to make the sand into bundles
and make ropes out of the sand to bind them
around.  Making ropes out of sand has always
been counted a hard thing to do, and it is really
no wonder that the devil could not do it.

After he had told us this one story the driver
was much better company, and I think he tried
to tell us all that he could about all that we
saw.  "The well of St. Keyne is not far from
here," he said.  "Perhaps you may have heard
of it, sir.  They tell the story about it that
when a man and a woman are married, the one
of them that drinks from the well of St. Keyne
first will always be the ruler of the house.  And
the story tells how there was a man who was
married, and he wanted to be sure to drink
first.  So as soon as the marriage was over he
left his wife in the church and ran and drank
from the well.  But his wife was before him
after all, for she had brought a bottle of the
water to church with her.  There was a piece
of poetry made about it.  I don't remember
who did it."

"Southey?" I suggested.

"Yes, sir; I think so, sir."

The driver showed us two curious stones in
a field that we passed and waited while we
went to look at them more closely.  They
stood on end and were rather higher than a
man's head, as I remember.  They were square
at the bottom, but smaller at the top, and one
of them had somewhat the form of a chair.
There was some rough carving on the sides.
The driver said that he had heard that some
old King of Cornwall was buried there.  Since
then I have read more about these stones in a
very old book about Cornwall.  The writer
does not seem to know much more than we as
to how they came there, but he says that they
are called "the Other Half Stone."  I think
that you will say that that is as curious a name
as you ever heard.  The old writer seems to
think so too, and he does not know anything
about the one half stone of which these are
"the other half."  But he says that they are
just half way between Exeter and the Land's End.

The driver decided that he would take us to
the Cheesewring before Dozmare Pool, and by
and by he said that we were as near to it as we
could go with the carriage.  He pointed it out
to us, on a hill, a long way off, as it seemed.
Then he drove along to a poor little village,
where we left the horse and carriage at a house
that called itself an hotel, and from there we
walked to the Cheesewring.  The way was
across a broad stretch of rough ground and it
was not at all easy walking.  We had not gone
far before the driver had some more stones to
show us.  They were not very large, but there
were a good many of them, and they stood on
end, as usual.  They had stood in two great
circles once, as if they were little stones trying to
look like Stonehenge, but now some of them
had fallen down, and of course that was a part
of their game of Stonehenge too.

"They call these the Hurlers," said the
driver, "and they tell the story that they were
men, who were turned into stone for playing
quoits on Sunday."  (He pronounced it
"kites.")  Then he pointed to two stones that stood by
themselves, a little way from the circles, and
said: "I suppose those two were men who were
only looking on, and not playing."

We resolved that we would never play quoits
on Sunday, or so much as look at anybody
playing quoits on Sunday, and then we went on
toward the Cheesewring.  We had to climb
a little way up the hillside to get to it, and
then we stood almost on the edge of a precipice,
looking down into a great quarry, where
there were men at work cutting out stone.  The
Cheesewring itself was almost on the edge of
the precipice too.  It was a great pile of
stones—a great pile, but few stones, for they were
huge ones.  They were skilfully fitted and
balanced, one upon the other, and the top one was
much the largest of them all, so that the whole
pile had somewhat the shape of a rude anvil.
The whole pile was perhaps four times as high
as our heads.  I think I have forgotten to say
till now that "Cheesewring" means "cheese-press,"
and surely a very large and very stiff
cheese might be well flattened out by having
that pile of stones set upon it.

The puzzle of it, as usual, is how the stones
got there.  The machinery that they are using
down below there in the quarry to-day would
be none too good to move such stones as these.
Yet there they are, and there is no history of
the time when they were put there.  "What
do you think of them," I said, "and whoever
do you suppose knew how to pile them up there?"

"I don't know," Helen answered, "but when
there are any big stones anywhere you
generally say that Merlin put them there."

"Well, I am not going to say so this time,
though these stones do somehow remind me of
Merlin.  Did I ever tell you what became of
him at last?"

"No," said Helen, "of course you didn't."

"Why, here we are," I said, "telling stories
about the very end of King Arthur's reign, and
nobody had seen or heard anything of Merlin
since almost the very beginning of it.  And do
you mean to tell me that I have never told you
what became of him?"

"Why, you know you never did; what was it?"

"Well, to be sure, if I have never told you
that, we ought not to lose another minute about
it.  But you must forget everything that you
have heard lately and go away back, for that is
where this story begins.  After Merlin had
taken good care of King Vortigern and of King
Pendragon, King Arthur's uncle; and King
Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father; and of King
Arthur himself; after he had set him on his
throne and had helped him to win battles and
to get his sword Excalibur, what do you think
Merlin did?  You would think that he was old
enough to know better, only I believe nobody
is ever old enough to know better.  He fell in love.

"Merlin knew everything, and so he knew
that he was going to fall in love.  He knew,
too, that because of his falling in love he should
go away from the court and away from the
King and away from all the world, and that
after that he should never be of any use again to
the King or to England or to the world.
Merlin knew, and yet he could not help it.  Merlin
could rule kingdoms and set up and cast down
kings, yet there was one power in the world
that he could not rule and could not resist.  He
could not save himself from the end that he
knew was coming.  He told King Arthur that
he should leave him soon and should never see
him again, and King Arthur tried to reason
with him and to make him use his magic
against his fate.  But Merlin said that no
magic could do any good; in this one thing he
was helpless; when the time came he must go,
and the time was coming soon.

"And who was it, do you suppose, that
Merlin was in love with?  It was Nimue, the Lady
of the Lake, Lancelot's Fairy Mother.  He met
her in a forest over in France, where she had
her home.  He taught her magic and he made
a splendid palace by magic and filled it with
knights and ladies for her, and there they had
feasts and dances and games.  One day she
asked him to show her how she could put to
sleep any one whom she chose, so that he could
not awake till she should let him awake.  And
Merlin knew that it was himself whom she
wished to put to sleep so, yet he knew that it was
fate that he should tell her, and so he told her.

"They used to meet in the forest near a
spring that was famous afterward, for the
water of the spring used to bubble up when
anything of iron or copper or brass was thrown
into it, and the children who knew the spring
threw pins into it and said: 'Laugh, spring,
and I will give you a pin,' and then the spring
would laugh for them.  Merlin sat often beside
the spring with Nimue and taught her magic.
He taught her so much that at last there was
nobody in the world who knew so much of it
as she, except himself and perhaps King
Arthur's sister, Queen Morgan-le-Fay.

"Then another time Nimue begged Merlin to
teach her how one man or woman could be
shut up by another, so that he never could get
away again, so that no one could ever come to
him but the one who had worked the spell, so
that he could never see any but that one, and
no one could break the spell but the one who
made it.  Then Merlin was sad again, for he
knew that Nimue loved him so much that she
wanted to keep him all to herself and never to
let any one else see him or hear of him.  And
he knew, too, that she must have her way in
this.  'I know,' he said, 'what it is that you
wish, and I love you so much that I know that
I must do what you ask.'

"'If you know what it is that I wish,' she
said, 'you know that I want a place where we
can be together always, only we two, where
nobody else can ever come to us and where I
shall never see any one but you and you will
never see anyone but me.  Surely, when I love
you so much as you know I do, you should love
me enough for that.'

"And still Merlin was sad, knowing that this
was to be the end of all his work for the King
and for the world, but he answered: 'I will do
what you ask.  I will make a place where we
two can be and no one else can ever come to
us or see us or know of us.'

"But Nimue said: 'I do not wish it so; you
must teach me the magic, so that I can do it
myself.  Then I will make the enchantment
when I please.'

"So Merlin, knowing that it was fate and
that there was no other way, taught her all the
charms by which she could do what she wished.
He taught her how to walk about in circles and
how to wave her hands and what words to say.
And she learned it and remembered it all.
Then they left France and came over into
Cornwall and wandered together about the
hills and the woods.  And one day, when they
had gone a long way, they sat down to rest.
And Nimue took Merlin's head in her lap and
put him to sleep with the charm that he had
taught her.  When he was asleep she rose and
walked around him nine times and waved her
hands and began to say the words that he had
taught her.  And as she worked the charm
Merlin slept more soundly, and then the ground
opened and he sank down into it.  She sank
down too, and when they were deep enough
the ground closed above them.  But still she
went on with the charm and great stones were
moved by the magic words and piled themselves
high above the place where they had sunk.

"When Merlin awoke he knew that the spell
was done.  He was in a beautiful place and
Nimue was with him.  She could go out and
come in when she chose, and she often did so,
but he could never go out till the spell was
broken.  And nobody could ever break the
spell but Nimue, who had made it.  Merlin
himself, with all his magic, could not break it,
for it was one of his own spells and the strongest
of them, and it was planned so that it could
never be undone by anyone, even the greatest
magician of the world, except the one who had
done it.  And Nimue never undid the spell.

"Now I am not sure where all this happened,
and you know I would not tell you anything
that I was not sure of.  Some say that it
was here in Cornwall and some say that it was
over in France, and that Merlin and Nimue did
not come back to England at all.  Some say,
too, that there was another Cornwall in France.
But if they did come to England again, and if
the place was in this very Cornwall, then why
might not this be the very place where we are?
Here is this great pile of stones and neither we
nor anybody else can tell how they came here
or how they could come here.  Why might
they not be the very ones that Nimue piled up
over Merlin by the enchantment that he taught
her?  I don't say that they are, but I do say
that I cannot see why they might not be, so let
us believe that they are."

Helen looked over the edge of the hill, down
into the quarry.  "If those men down there dig
out the rock a little more over this way," she said,
"they will let Merlin out, if he is still there."

"They will do nothing of the sort," I
answered; "do you think that Merlin's charms
were worth no more than that?  No one can
ever let Merlin out of his prison but Nimue,
and she never did and never will.  If those men
down there should dig to where Merlin was,
you may be sure that he would sink again,
down and down through the earth, so that no
quarriers in the world could ever reach him.
Merlin's charms were charms that were made to
last, and Merlin will never be seen again on
the earth as long as Stonehenge is on Salisbury
Plain."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"AND ON THE MERE THE WAILING DIED AWAY"`:


.. _`St. Joseph's Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey`:

.. figure:: images/img-233.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: St. Joseph's Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey

   St. Joseph's Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   "AND ON THE MERE THE WAILING DIED AWAY"

.. vspace:: 2

It was only a short drive from the place
where we had left the carriage to Dozmare
Pool.  That is, it was a short drive to the
nearest place to it where we could get with the
carriage.  The carriage could not go close to
it, any more than it could to the Cheesewring.
The driver began to remember still more about
Dozmare Pool, as we got nearer to it.  The
water was salt, like the sea, he had heard, and
in stormy times it had great waves like the sea.

This reminded me of some things that I had
heard and read about it myself.  The name
"Dozmare," I had been told somewhere, meant
"drop of the sea."  I had been told somewhere
else that the name was made up of two Cornish
words that meant "come" and "great," and that
the name was given to it because it had tides,
like the ocean.  Long ago it had no outlet that
anybody could see, but it was said that
something that was thrown onto it was found many
miles off, on the seashore.  So it was believed
that a passage under ground led from it to the
sea.  It was said, too, that it was so deep that
no plummet had ever reached its bottom.

We came at last to the foot of a steep hill and
the driver said that we could not go any farther
with the carriage.  He would stay here and
attend to the horse, and we must go straight up
this hill and we should find Dozmare Pool.  Up
the hill we went, a good, long climb, and when
we got to the top, though we knew what we
had come to see, we were surprised to see it.
For all of a sudden there it was before us, the
broad lake on the top of the hill, just where we
should expect to find the downward slope of
the other side of the hill.  It did not look like
a stormy sea to-day, but a fresh breeze was
blowing over it and drove the little waves
before it against the bank, where they made a
plashing noise at our feet.  The pool seemed
to be at the very top of everything, except that
far away across it we could see a mountain,
with two peaks.

There was one little house near us and no
other in sight.  Near the house a man was at
work piling up turf, cut in long, square strips,
for winter fires.  A little boy was playing
about, or trying to help the man, and a woman
was driving a cart that brought the turf from
somewhere down below.  We asked the man
what mountain that was with the two peaks.

"Brown Gilly, sir," he said.

"Is the water of this lake salt?" we asked again.

"No, sir, it's fresh."

"Is it good to drink?"

"We don't drink it ourselves, sir, but it's
good for washing and the cattle drink it."

"How big is the lake?"

"It's about a mile and a quarter round, sir."

"And is there any outlet?"

"Yes, sir, down at the other end there's one."

"It was not always there, was it?  When was it made?"

"I couldn't say, sir; it was there before my time."

We left the man to pile his turf and wonder
what strange sort of people we could be who
wanted to know so many useless things.  "Well,
there is so much of our story spoiled," I said.
"It is not salt and it probably does not have
waves like the ocean, and an outlet has been
made for it.  Still, as you stand and look over
it, do you not feel that there is something
lonely and solemn and mysterious and magical
about it?  When you think of its being here at
the top of a hill, instead of down in a valley,
like a common lake, and when you see no
higher hill around it, except that one mountain
over there, and when you think of the stories
about it, do you not get a little of what our old
friend of the Alice books calls the 'eerie'
feeling?  Have you guessed that the reason why
I brought you here was that this was the lake
where King Arthur found his sword Excalibur?
Well, it was.  And now I have another story
to tell you about it.  It is rather a sad story.
The most of our stories are getting to be rather
sad now, but there are not many more of them."

I had told Helen long before how King
Arthur got his sword Excalibur.  His sword had
been broken in a fight one day, and Merlin led
him to the shore of a little lake—this very lake
where we stood now—and out in the middle of
it he had seen an arm rising out of the water.
The arm was covered with white silk and the
hand held a sword, the most beautiful that
Arthur had ever seen.  Merlin and Arthur went
out to it in a boat and the King took the sword
and kept it.  That was the wonderful sword
Excalibur.  Merlin told Arthur strange things
about the sword.  No one else ever knew what
they were, and it may be that we do not know,
even yet, of all the wonders of that sword.

But now for the story.  "You know," I said,
"that I do not often throw morals at you in
these stories.  As a general thing, I hate to see
morals hung up on the ends of stories as much
as you do.  If the moral cannot make itself felt
as the story goes along, it isn't of much use,
usually, to drag it out and hold it up at the
end.  But this story has such a good and sound
and useful moral that I can't help pointing it
out to you.  But I will put it here at the
beginning, instead of at the end, and have it over
with.  It is that when a lie has been told about
anybody, no matter how wicked and silly it is,
no matter how clearly it may have been proved
to be a lie, it will always stick to him, it will
never be forgotten, and there will always be
people who will half believe it.

"You remember how once Meliagraunce
charged Queen Guinevere with treason against
King Arthur.  Everybody knew that Meliagraunce
himself was a traitor and a liar and
that he got killed for telling that one lie.  Still
it never was forgotten and there were some
who never had quite the trust in the Queen
again that they had had before.  And since it
was Lancelot who had fought for the Queen
then and at other times, they looked at him just
as they did at her, and shook their heads and
whispered to one another that they wondered
if Lancelot was quite as true to the King as he
ought to be.  There were some who said, too,
that Lancelot and the Queen both cared too
much about honors and glory for themselves
and not enough about the honor of the King.
And I am afraid that was not a lie.

"Still all this thinking and talking counted
for little for a long time.  And then there came
a time when they counted for much.  It was
after the quest of the Holy Grail.  Lancelot had
come back to the court and Bors had come
back from the City of Sarras, and all had come
back who were ever coming.  Then, all at once,
as it has always seemed to me, without any
reason, half the people in King Arthur's court
went mad.  The first and the worst of them
was Mordred, King Arthur's nephew, Gawain's
brother.  He was always all but mad with
jealousy and envy and hatred of all who were
greater than himself.  And now he thought
that nothing less could please him than to
overthrow King Arthur and to be King of England.

"There are some people who cannot think of
any better way of helping themselves than by
doing all the harm that they can to those who
stand in their way.  Mordred was of this sort.
He looked about him to see who there was
whom he could harm, and he thought of this
old lie about the Queen and of these new doubts
about Lancelot.  Then he went to the King
and told him that he had found that Lancelot
and the Queen were plotting treason together
and forming some plan against the King.  If
the King wanted proof of it, Mordred said, let
him go hunting the next day, and while he was
gone, Mordred and some others would find
Lancelot and the Queen together.

"Now Lancelot and the Queen had always
been the best of friends and what in the world
was supposed to be proved by their being seen
together I am sure I don't know.  But just at
this time it seems to me that it was the King
who went mad, and he said that he would do
as Mordred advised him.

"The next day the King went hunting.  Now
Bors and some of Lancelot's other friends had
heard these whispers about the court and they
had told Lancelot of them.  They had decided
that it might stop the chatter, about Lancelot
at least, if he were to leave the court for a time.
It happened that Lancelot had meant to go
this very day, and so he went to say good-by
to the Queen.  Bors knew what a mischief-maker
Mordred was; he had seen that he dif
not go to the hunt with the King, and he feared
that something was wrong.  He begged Lancelot
not to go to see the Queen, but Lancelot
laughed at the notion that there was anything to
fear and went.  And Mordred and some other
knights whom he had got on his side were
watching, and the minute that Lancelot and the
Queen were together they were upon them.

"Lancelot had come only to see the Queen
and to bid her good-by; he had not expected any
fighting, and so he wore no armor.  Mordred
and his knights meant to fall upon Lancelot all
at once and kill him or take him prisoner.  But
Lancelot was quick enough to shut the door of
the room and keep them out for a few minutes.
Then he drew his sword and opened the door
just enough to let one of the knights come in.
He struck that one with his sword and wounded
him so that he fell inside the room, and then
he shut the door again.  Lancelot quickly took
off the armor of the wounded knight and
dressed himself in it.  Then he threw the door
wide open and rushed at the crowd of knights
striking about him as he went and wounding
more of them.

"Many as they were they could not stand
against Lancelot and he escaped from them
and went back to his friends.  I suppose I
ought to say just here that there was scarcely
ever a man in the world who had such friends
as Lancelot.  There were his brother Ector, his
cousins Bors and Lionel, Lavaine, and many
others who were ready to give their very lives
for Lancelot at any time.  And now, after this
terrible thing had happened, they all left the
city with him, as quickly as they could, and
then they waited near to see what would be
done with the Queen.

"When the King came back Mordred told
him about what had happened, in his own lying
way, I suppose.  And the King, it seems, had
not got over his fit of madness yet, for surely
nobody in his senses could think that what
Mordred had to tell proved anything.  But of
course we don't know just how much Mordred
lied, and I wonder if the King believed him
just because he was his own nephew.  Such
things happen sometimes, though for my own
part I don't see why any man should be
believed because he is another man's nephew.
Bad men have uncles, as well as good men.
But it seems that the King did believe him, for
some reason or other, and did believe that the
Queen and Lancelot were guilty of treason.
And he said that the Queen should have the
punishment of treason, and so should Lancelot,
if he could get him.  Now the punishment of
treason in those days was burning.

"Now, mad as the King seems to have been,
I no more believe that he would have the
Queen burnt than I believe that he would have
himself burnt.  I don't know why he pretended
that he would.  Perhaps he thought that he
could make her confess something, or perhaps
he thought that Mordred, when he saw how
far things were going, would confess that he
was wrong.  But the King declared that the
punishment of the Queen should be the next
morning and he ordered some of his knights,
and among them Gareth and his brother
Gaheris, to be present and see it done.  They and
some of the others told the King plainly that
they thought that what he was doing was
wrong and that they would have nothing to do
with it.  Since he commanded them to be present,
they said, they would be there only to look
on, and they would wear no armor.

"And now it came Lancelot's turn to go mad.
For he believed that the King would really do
all that he said.  So he resolved that he would
save the Queen.  The King himself would have
saved her, I am sure, before any harm could
come to her.  But Lancelot heard what was to
be done and in the morning he took some of
his friends, all fully armed, and they rode to
the place where the Queen was led out for her
punishment.  Lancelot and his men dashed
through the crowd of King Arthur's knights,
the most of whom wore no armor, laying about
them with their swords, killing some and
wounding others, and came to where the Queen
stood.  Lancelot lifted her and put her on his
horse behind him, and he and his knights rode
away again.  They did not stop near the city
this time, but they rode straight to a castle of
Lancelot's own, called Joyous Gard, and there
they all shut themselves in and fortified the town.

"But in the saving of the Queen another
terrible thing had happened.  As Lancelot dashed
through the crowd of King Arthur's knights to
come where she was, some of them struck at
him, and in return he layed about him with his
sword and could not see who was in his way,
and so, not knowing who they were, he struck
Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris, who wore no
armor, and killed them both.  And now it was
Gawain who went mad.  When he heard that
Lancelot had killed his brothers he would not
believe that it was by accident and he swore
that he would always follow Lancelot and try
to find chances to fight with him, till one of
them should kill the other.  He urged the King
to make war at once upon Lancelot, and the
King and his army marched to Joyous Gard
and besieged the castle and the town.

"Lancelot had many friends, as I said before,
and many of the lords and knights of the
country, when they heard what had happened,
thought that Lancelot was right and came to
help him.  By the time that the King and his
army came to Joyous Gard Lancelot had a
good army of his own there.  But Lancelot did
not want to fight the King, and for many days
he kept all his men inside the town.  He sent
messages to the King and to Gawain.  He told
the King that neither he nor the Queen had
ever thought of doing him any wrong, and
he begged him to let the Queen come back to
him and to leave off this war.  He told Gawain
that he had loved his brother Gareth as if he
had been his own brother and that he would as
soon have killed his own brother as Gareth or
Gaheris, if he had known who they were.  And
the King was so sad at all that had been done
that he wanted to give up the whole war, but
Gawain would not hear of it.  He would never
forgive Lancelot for killing his brothers, he
said, till one of them should kill the other.

"Then Lancelot's friends urged him to fight.
Gawain would never let the King give up the
war, they said, and it would be best to end it
now.  And Lancelot felt that they were right,
and at last he yielded and said that he would
go out to battle the next morning.  In the
morning Lancelot's army marched out of the
city and the army of the King came to meet it.
Lancelot had ordered all his men that whatever
they did they should do no harm to the King
or to Gawain.  As for himself, he scarcely
fought at all.  He rode about the field and saw
others fight.  He saw many of his own men
wounded and killed, but he had no heart to
strike a blow against King Arthur or any
knight of his.  At last he saw the King himself
charging against his cousin Bors.  Bors met
the charge with his spear and threw King
Arthur from his horse.  When Lancelot saw that
he rode to where the King was and got off his
horse.  'Here, my lord,' he said, 'take this
horse; you and your knights fight against me
and have no mercy, but I cannot fight against
my King or see him overthrown and not try
to help him.'

"And the King took Lancelot's horse and
rode away from the field and called all his men
away too, and Lancelot's men went back to the town.

"The next day Lancelot sent messengers to
King Arthur again to ask him to let the Queen
come back, to promise that she should not be
harmed, and to end the war.  And the King
would have done everything that Lancelot
asked, but again Gawain would not hear of it.
'Let the Queen come back if you like,' said
Gawain; 'that is nothing to me.  But I will
not forgive Lancelot for killing my brothers
and I will always follow him and fight with him
till I kill him or he kills me.'

"You know I told you long ago of the old
story that Gawain could speak so well that
nobody could ever refuse him anything that he
asked.  I think that must have been why the
King let him have his own way all through this
war with Lancelot.  I am sure that the King
himself must have got back his senses now,
and I almost think, after all, that he never really
believed that the Queen or Lancelot could wish
to do any wrong to him.  How could he let
her come back at all if he believed that?  And
he did let her come back, but still Gawain was
firm against Lancelot, and the King would not
make peace with him till Gawain wished it.

"When Lancelot had sent the Queen back to
King Arthur he thought that it was of no use
to stay in England any longer, so he took all his
knights and his army with him and crossed
over into France.  He went to Benwick, his
father's old city and his own city now, because
his father was dead long ago.  And soon King
Arthur and Gawain followed him with their
army, for Gawain still vowed that he would go
where Lancelot went and would not leave him
till one of them had killed the other.  In these
last dreadful days of King Arthur's reign it
seems as if no one ever missed a chance of
making a mistake, and now Arthur made
another.  For when he went over to France he
left Mordred in his place to rule England till
he came back, and he left the Queen in
Mordred's care too.

"So the King and Gawain and their army
came to Benwick and besieged it, as they had
besieged Joyous Gard.  Lancelot sent a
message to them again.  He would do anything if
they would end the war and not make him fight
against the King and his old friend.  He would
give up his city to them, if they would take it,
and let all the world think that he was beaten,
when he was not beaten at all, or that he was
a coward and did not dare to fight.  Still
Gawain would be content with nothing but that
Lancelot must fight with him.  But he sent
back word that if Lancelot alone would come
out and fight with him alone, till one of them
should kill the other, that one fight should end
the war.

"When this message was brought to Lancelot
his friends told him that it was of no use
any longer to hope for peace.  Gawain would
never yield, and it must be as he said at last.
It would be better for Lancelot to fight with
him now than to wait.  Lancelot knew that
they were right, and he sent word that the next
morning he would meet Gawain outside the
city and fight with him.

"They met the next morning, in the space
between the city walls and King Arthur's army.
Both the knights were thrown from their horses
at the first charge, and then it was the old story
of a sword fight that I have told you so many
times before.  But Gawain had the gift of
growing stronger every day, from nine o'clock
till noon, and then he had three times his
natural strength.  This had been given to him by
a magician long ago, and nobody knew that he
had it except himself and King Arthur.  Lancelot
knew nothing about it, but he had not been
fighting long before he knew that there was
something strange about Gawain's fighting.
He felt him growing so strong that he scarcely
tried to strike at Gawain at all, but used all his
strength in defending himself.  And so for a
long time neither of them was much harmed,
but when noon came, all at once Lancelot felt
that Gawain had grown weaker.  Then he said:
'Gawain, I do not know with what magic you
have fought till now.  But, whatever it was, I
feel now that it has left you and you are like
any other man.  Now I must begin to fight.'

"Then he struck Gawain a great blow on
the head and wounded him, so that he fell, and
Lancelot stood still beside him, resting on his
sword.  'Why do you stop your fight?' Gawain
cried.  'You have beaten me; finish it
now and kill me.'

"'You know,' said Lancelot, 'that I cannot
kill any knight who is wounded and helpless,
and least of all you, who have been my friend
so long.  Our fight is over.'

"'Kill me and make an end to it,' Gawain
said again, 'or as soon as I am cured of this
wound I shall come and fight you again.'

"'If I must fight with you again," said Lancelot,
'I shall be ready; I can do no more now.'

"So Gawain was carried back to his tent and
was kept there for many days, while his wound
was healing.  And as soon as he was strong
enough he sent word to Lancelot that he must
fight him again.  There is no need of making
a long story of it.  Gawain and Lancelot fought
again and the fight ended exactly as the first
one had done.  Lancelot wounded Gawain in
the very same place where he had wounded
him before, and Gawain was carried back to
his tent, vowing that he would still fight with
Lancelot as soon as his wound should heal.

"And what do you suppose had been going
on in England all this time?  You might
almost guess.  You would think that Mordred
could not possibly keep out of mischief so long,
and you would be quite right.  King Arthur
had not had much more than time to get to
Benwick before Mordred began to tell people
that the King was dead.  He showed some
letters, which he had written himself, but he
pretended that they had come from France,
and they said that the King had been killed in
a battle against Lancelot.  Of course the only
thing to do in such a case was to crown
Mordred himself as King, and Mordred took care
that it should be done in a hurry.  Then, to
make everything as sure as possible, he gave
notice that he was going to marry Queen
Guinevere.  Of course he did not trouble
himself to ask Queen Guinevere whether or not it
suited her to be married to him.  He had
begun to have his own way and he was resolved
to go on.  The Queen saw that it would not do
any good to pretend that she did not want to be
married to him, so she let Mordred think that
there was nothing that would please her better
than to be his wife.  But she said that if she was
to be married she should have to go to London
to get some new gowns.  Mordred saw nothing
wrong about that and he let her go.  Then,
as soon as she got to London, she shut herself
up in the Tower and found men who were
friendly to her to guard it, and waited for
Mordred to come and try to get her out of it.

"He came, you may be sure, as soon as he
heard where she was, and he laid siege to the
Tower, but it was so strong, and Queen
Guinevere's men fought so well, that he could not
take it.  He kept up the siege till he heard that
King Arthur and all his men were coming back
from France and Lancelot and his men were
coming with them.  When he heard that he
drew his army away from London and marched
to Dover to meet the King and to keep him
from getting England away from him.

"It was true that the King and his men were
coming back from France, but it was not true
that Lancelot was coming.  Lancelot did not
know why King Arthur and his army had so
suddenly left Benwick.  It was because the
King had heard of the mischief that Mordred
had done and of the more mischief that he was
trying to do.  Even Gawain could not ask the
King to make war upon Lancelot any longer,
when England itself was likely to be lost.
Gawain had been acting in a mad fashion enough
for a long time, but the news from England
brought him back to his senses.  His wound was
nearly healed and he was beginning again to
want to fight with Lancelot, but now he saw
all at once what harm his wild anger against
Lancelot had done.  He was filled with shame
and grief at the thought of it.  'It is I,' he said
to the King, 'who have done all this.  I see it
now.  It is Lancelot who has always been your
truest and best friend, and it is I who have been
your enemy.  I fear that I have done too much
for you to forgive, but there is hope still, for I
know that Lancelot will still be your friend.
Send for him; tell him that I was wrong in
everything—that I confess it—and ask him to
go with you and help you to win back England
from Mordred.'

"If the King had ever doubted Lancelot he
doubted him no longer now.  Gawain, who
had been against him so long, was for him now.
But the King looked sadly at Gawain and shook
his head.  'Gawain, Gawain,' he said, 'we have
gone too far.  We have wronged Lancelot too
much.  We cannot ask him to help us now.  We
must fight our battles and win them or lose
them by ourselves.'

"So the King and Gawain and their army
left Lancelot and Benwick and crossed into
England.  As soon as they landed at Dover
Mordred met them and there was a hard battle.
Many were killed and wounded on both sides
and at last Mordred was driven back.  But
when the battle was over Gawain had been
wounded again just where Lancelot had
wounded him twice before.

"And this time he felt that he could not live.
Then Gawain thought: 'If the King could not
ask Lancelot to help him, yet surely I can ask
him, now that I am dying.  It was I who
wronged him and I who was his enemy.  But
when he comes I shall not be here any more,
and I know that he always loved the King and
that he loves him still.'

"And Gawain told those who were about
him to bring him pen and paper, and he wrote
a letter to Lancelot.  The letter said: 'Sir
Lancelot, I am dying from a wound that I got
in battle to-day, just where you wounded me
twice.  I have been blind and deaf and mad all
this while.  I would not see or hear the truth,
and the truth is, Lancelot, that it is you who
have been always the King's friend and that it
is I who, in these last days, have been his
enemy.  My pride and my selfishness and my
anger have almost ruined the King, but it may
be that your true love and your strength can
save him yet.  Come and help him, Lancelot.
I have given you cause to hate me, but do not
stay away from the King for that, for when you
come to him I shall be dead.'

"This letter Gawain gave to a messenger
and ordered him to cross with it to France and
to ride as fast as he could to Benwick and give
it to Lancelot.  And a little while after that
Gawain died.

"The next day King Arthur marched against
Mordred.  Mordred, with his army, fell back
before him and day after day the King pushed
him farther and farther into the West, till at
last the two armies were here in Cornwall.
They had both been gathering strength as they
marched, for many knights and many other
men joined them as they passed through the
country.  Some joined Mordred because they
were friends to Lancelot, not knowing, they
were so little and so narrow themselves, that
Lancelot was great enough to be the King's
friend still.

"At last Mordred and his army halted and
would retreat no farther.  Then it seemed that
the great battle must come the next day.  But
that night King Arthur had a dream.  He
dreamed that Gawain came and stood before
him, and Gawain said: 'My lord, do not fight
with Mordred to-morrow.  If you fight with
him to-morrow you will be killed.  But put off
the battle for a little while and Lancelot and all
his knights and all his men will come to help
you.'

"In the morning, when the King awoke, he
sent messengers to Mordred to ask him to meet
him between the lines of the two armies and
agree upon a truce.  So it was arranged that
Arthur and Mordred should each bring
fourteen knights and that they should meet
half-way between the two armies.  Then Arthur
said to his knights whom he left behind: 'I do
not trust Mordred.  I fear that he will try
some treachery.  So watch us when we meet
and while we talk, and if you see any sword
drawn among the men on either side, do not
wait for any more, but charge forward and
begin the battle.'  And Mordred, before he went
to meet the King, gave just the same command
to his knights who stayed behind.

"All the knights who went with the King
and with Mordred were told that this was to
be a peaceful meeting and that no sword must
be drawn.  But after the King and Mordred
had met and while they were talking, a little
snake came out from under a bush and stung the
foot of one of the knights.  The knight forgot
the order that had been given and drew his
sword to kill the snake.  But the men of the
armies were too far away to see the snake and
to know why the sword was drawn.  They saw
only the flash of the drawn sword and that was
the signal of battle.  It was of no use for
Arthur or for Mordred to try to stop them or to
delay the battle then.  The trumpets blew, the
knights charged forward, the two great waves
of horses and men broke upon each other with
a harsh rattle and jangle and clash of arms all
along the field, and the battle was joined.

.. _`"The two great waves broke upon each other"`:

.. figure:: images/img-256.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "The two great waves broke upon each other"

   "The two great waves broke upon each other"

"In all his long reign, King Arthur had
never fought such a battle as this before.
There were thousands of men on each side and
they were all men who had learned to fight in
King Arthur's own battles and tournaments.
They were men who had learned from him to
fight and to fight and to go on fighting and never
to stop till they had won.  With men like that
on both sides there was only one way that the
battle could end.  The battle went on all day.
Slowly the knights on each side grew fewer
and fewer and all who saw them knew that the
fight would go on till there was none at all on
one side or the other.  Arthur's men were
faithful to him to their last breath, and
Mordred's men felt that they should be ruined if
they were beaten.  Once Arthur saw one of
his old knights surrounded by enemies, and the
old knight's son was close beside the King.
The King and those around him had as much
fighting as they could do, but Arthur said to
the young knight: 'Do you not see your father
there in danger?  Why do you not go to help him?'

"And the young knight answered: 'My
lord, my father told me this morning to stay
beside you all day and to let nothing draw me
away from you.  My father is a good knight
and he must fight for himself.'  And the old
knight was killed, and afterward the son was
killed, too.

"When the evening came there were few
left to fight.  It may be that some had run
away, but the most were dead or wounded.
King Arthur stood with only two of his knights
beside him.  They were Sir Lucan and Sir
Bedivere.  The King looked all about him and
saw only one other man near.  And that was
Mordred.  The King spoke under his breath:
'The end is come, I fear, for all of us, but
before I die that man there shall die, who has
brought this end to all of us.'

"Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere tried to hold
him back.  'My lord,' said Sir Bedivere, 'do
not try to fight any more with him to-day, or
he may kill you.  Remember what Gawain
said to you in your dream.  Mordred has no
friends left now.  Leave him for to-night, and
to-morrow we can do justice upon him.'

"'No,' said the King, 'that traitor shall
not live any longer, and I will kill him myself.'

"Arthur had his sword Excalibur in his
hand.  He rushed upon Mordred with it and
struck him one blow upon the head, and
Mordred fell down dead.  But Arthur had been so
eager against Mordred that he had not thought
to defend himself.  Mordred had struck too at
the same time and had struck well and Arthur
had a great wound on his head.  Lucan and
Bedivere went to him and he tried to stand,
but he could not.  'You must help me,' he
said, 'to some place of shelter; I cannot help
myself any more.'

"They tried to lift him up, but Lucan, who
had been wounded in the battle, suddenly fell
down beside the King and died.  Then Arthur
said: 'Bedivere, you are the last one left to me
and there is only a little more that you can do.
Take my sword Excalibur and go up this hill
here before us.  At the top of it there is a lake.
Throw my sword into the lake, as far out into
the middle of it as you can, and then come back
and tell me what you see.'

"Bedivere took the sword and climbed the
hill and came to this very spot where we are
standing.  But on the way he looked at the
sword and at the jewels in the hilt and he
thought: 'It would be wrong to throw away
this beautiful sword.  I will hide it here,
instead of throwing it into the lake.  Then, if the
King is cured of his wound, he will be glad to
have his sword again, and if he dies, someone
else can have it.'

"So he hid the sword among the reeds that
grew by the side of the lake and went back to
the King.  'Did you throw my sword into the
lake?' the King asked.

"'Yes, my lord,' said Bedivere.

"'And what did you see or hear?' said the King.

"'Nothing,' said Bedivere, 'but the water
and the wind.'

"'Then you did not throw it in,' the King
answered.  'Go back now and throw it in, as I
told you, and come back and tell me what you see.'

"Then Bedivere went up the hill again to
the lake and took the sword out from where he
had hidden it.  He held it up in the moonlight
and saw the shining of the rich jewels and the
gleam of the long blade and again he thought:
'It would be a sin to lose such a wonderful
thing as this.  The King is wounded and weak
and he is wandering in his mind, or else he
would not tell me to do it.  I will tell him again
that I have thrown it in.'

"He hid the sword again and went back to the
King, and the King said: 'Did you throw my
sword into the lake?'

"'Yes, my lord,' said Bedivere, 'I threw it in.'

"'And what did you see or hear?' said Arthur.

"'I saw nothing but the water,' said Bedivere,
'and I heard nothing but the wind and the waves.'

"'Oh, Bedivere,' said Arthur, 'you are the
last of my knights and you will not obey me.
Go now once more and throw my sword as far
as you can out into the lake.  And if you do
not obey me this time, when you come again,
wounded as I am, I will rise up and kill you, if
I can, with my hands.'

"Then Bedivere went as fast as he could up
the hill again and found the sword and took it
and swung it above his head and threw it as
far as he could out over the lake.  He watched
it as it whirled through the air, and when it was
near the water he saw an arm, covered with
white silk, come up out of the water.  The
hand caught the sword as it fell and brandished
it three times in a circle, and then the hand and
the arm went down under the water, and
Bedivere went back and told the King.  'And now,
Bedivere,' said Arthur, 'help me to go to the
lake too.'

"But the King could not stand at all, so
Bedivere took him on his back and carried him
up the hill to the side of the lake.  And there
they saw a boat lying close to the shore.  It
was filled with women, all dressed in black, and
three, who stood in the midst of them, were
queens and wore crowns.  'Put me in the boat,'
said Arthur, and Bedivere carried him to the
boat and the three queens received him, and all
the women in the boat wept when they saw
him.  The three queens laid him down and one
of them took his head in her lap and said: 'My
dear brother, why did you wait so long?  You
should have come here to us as soon as you had
this wound.'

"And this woman was King Arthur's sister,
Queen Morgan-le-Fay.  I don't know when or
why she had ceased to be his enemy and had
become his friend, but she was his friend now
and she did all that she could to help him and
to cure his wound.

"Then Bedivere saw that the boat was moving
from the shore, and he cried: 'My lord—my
King—where shall I go and what shall I
do without you?  Let me go with you where
you go and die with you, if you are to die.'

"But Arthur answered: 'Do not be grieved
for me, Bedivere, but go your own way.
Perhaps you may hear of me again, but now I can
do no more for you or for my people.  I am
going to the Valley of Avalon, to be cured of
my wound, and some time, perhaps, when my
wound is well, I shall come again.'

"Then the boat moved farther and farther
away along the lake.  The King did not speak
again, but Bedivere could hear Queen Morgan-le-Fay
speaking softly to him, and he could
hear the other women weeping.  Only for a
little while he could hear them, and then he
strained his eyes to see the boat as long as he
could.  But the light was dim and soon the
dark shape of the boat mixed with the dark
shadows and was lost.

"And so King Arthur floated away to
Avalon.  You know that Avalon was Glastonbury,
and you do not see, perhaps, how any boat
could go from this mountain lake, all shut in by
the land, out to the sea and inland again to that
island with the marsh around it.  You must
think of the magic of Queen Morgan-le-Fay.
Where she wanted her boat to go I am sure
that water-ways would open of themselves to
let her pass.  A ship with her upon it would
go as fast and as far as she would have it go.
And then, one of the old stories says, they had
a pilot who knew all the seas and all the stars
of the heavens.

"Sir Bedivere looked after the boat till it
had been gone from his sight for a long time.
Then he turned away from the lake, went down
the hill, and wandered away through the woods.
He did not know where he was going and he
did not care.  He scarcely saw what places he
passed.  He was thinking of his King who had
been taken away from him.  He thought of
the bright old days when Arthur won his
crown in the battles with the rebel Kings, when
his own knights learned to love his strength
and his truth and his nobleness.  He thought
of the happy days when the greatest knights
of the world gathered at the Round Table in
Camelot.  He thought of how they had helped
the King to bring peace and plenty and content
to the land.  He thought of the sad later days
and of these last days of all and he wished that
he might have died before they came.  He
could not think at all yet of what he was still
to do or how he was to live without his King.

"So, deep in these sad thoughts, he went on
and on, stopped now and then, where he could,
to eat or drink, because he knew he must, or
lay down in the forest to sleep, but never
thought and never knew how long he had been
on the way or how weary he was.  At last he
heard a bell and saw an abbey before him.  He
went into the chapel and saw a man kneeling
upon a tomb.  The man rose and came to meet
him.  He was the abbot.  'Sir,' said Bedivere,
'whose tomb is that where I saw you praying?'

"'I do not know,' said the abbot.  'Last night
a great company of ladies came here and
brought a dead man and begged me to bury
him.  And I buried him in that tomb there before
the altar, but they did not tell me who he was.'

"'Then I will tell you,' said Bedivere.  'If a
company of ladies brought him, it was King
Arthur.'

"Then Bedivere asked the hermit to let him
stay there and live with him.  And he stayed
for a long time there in the Abbey of Glastonbury,
and visited the poor and the sick, and at
last he became a priest.

"And that was all that was known of how
King Arthur passed away from the battle, of
how he came to Avalon, and of how he was
buried.  The abbot did not know who the man
was whom he had buried, till Bedivere told
him, and Bedivere thought that he was King
Arthur only because a company of ladies had
brought him.  But Arthur himself had told
Bedivere that he was going to Avalon to be
cured of his wound, and that some time he
might come again.  And so, on a stone over the
grave at Glastonbury, they put the words:

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   hic jacet Arthurus,
   Rex quondam Rexque futurus.

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That is Latin and it means: 'Here lies Arthur,
King that was and King that shall be.'  And
so it was long believed that some time King
Arthur would come back to conquer the foes of
England and to save the people.  Some said
that he was taken away in the boat to some
happy island, to be cured of his wound and to
wait for the time when England should need
him most.  Some said that he was sleeping
down under the ground, with his knights, at
Caerleon-upon-Usk, and others that he was in
the enchanted castle on the hill at Camelot.
Some believed that he was a raven, flying
around the Cornish coast, and some that he
was dead like other men, and in his grave in
the Abbey of Glastonbury."





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.. _`THE ABBESS AND THE MONK`:

.. _`The Choir, Glastonbury Abbey`:

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   :alt: The Choir, Glastonbury Abbey

   The Choir, Glastonbury Abbey

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   CHAPTER XVIII


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   THE ABBESS AND THE MONK

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We did get back to Glastonbury at last, and
this time we did not miss seeing the abbey.
We spent some time in tracing it all out from
its ruins.  It was a great and beautiful church
in its time.  Now it has been crumbling and
falling for many years.  Worse than that, the
people of the country about here, when they
wanted stone for building, instead of finding
new stone, used to come and take some from the
old abbey.  But, after all that time and men
could do to it, much of it still stands, and it is
full of that sad, sweet beauty and stateliness
that nothing but a ruin ever has.  The walls of
St. Joseph's chapel still remain, all covered with
ivy, there is a good deal of the choir left, and
there are two of the great, tall piers that held
the tower.  Then, some way off, there is the
abbot's kitchen, still all but perfect.

We found the place, or thought we did,
where Joseph of Arimathæa first built his little
church of wood and woven twigs.  We tried
to find the spot where King Arthur was buried.
That is not easy, but we hit upon a place at last
where we thought it must have been.  When
Henry II was King a search was made for
King Arthur's grave by his order.  They
found it, they said, and Henry had a monument
put over it.  The monument is gone now,
probably carried away, like so much of the abbey,
to build stables, or something else just as noble
and important, and there is nothing left to show
where it stood.  If we were talking of history
instead of stories I might have something to
say about this one of Henry II.  But, as it is,
it may as well stand with the rest of them.

"There is one more story," I said, "that I
must tell you while we are here among these
ruins.  Then I shall have told you all that I
set out to tell, and we shall have made the
journey that we set out to make.

"When the letter that Gawain wrote was
brought to Lancelot he lost no time in calling
his knights and his army together and starting
toward England to help King Arthur.  If the
King could only have delayed that last great
battle, as he tried to do, Lancelot would have
been with him and all would have been well.
But when Lancelot landed at Dover the people
told him that he had come too late.  They told
him of the battle that had been fought there, in
which Gawain was killed, and of the greater
battle that had been fought afterward far away
in the West.  All that they could tell him of
the King was that he was gone.  Some said
that he was dead, and some that he had been
carried away to Fairyland, where he would live
till his people needed him.

"Then Lancelot asked: 'Where is the Queen?'

"'She shut herself up in the Tower of
London,' some one answered, 'to save herself from
Mordred.  Then, when Mordred left London
and came here to meet the King, she left the
Tower, too, and they say that she went to some
abbey and is living with the nuns.'

"Then Lancelot told Bors and the other
knights who were with him to wait at Dover
while he went to find the Queen.  He rode
alone through the country, asking at all the
abbeys that he found, and at last he came to
Almesbury, the place that is now called
Amesbury, where we went, you know, on our way
to Stonehenge.  And at the abbey there he
saw the Queen walking in the cloister.  She
saw him too and came to meet him.

"'I have come,' Lancelot said, 'to take you
from this place.  The King is gone from us
now, and we shall never see him in this world
again.  Come with me now to my own city.
While the King was with us I did not care
whether I had a city.  I thought it grander
and nobler to be his knight than to be King of
all the world but England.  You know, my
Queen, that I am King of Benwick.  Come
with me now and be my Queen still, more my
Queen than ever, the Queen of Benwick.  It
is a little place, but my people love me, and
they will love you, too.'

"'Lancelot,' said the Queen, 'we must not
think of such things—I must not.  You must
go back and rule your people well and make
them happy—yes, and be happy yourself, if you
can—but I must stay here and try to do a little
good to the poor, and fast and pray, so that
God will forgive me and so that he will forgive
you and let us see our Arthur in another world,
since we cannot in this.  For, Lancelot, do you
know that it is because of us—because of me
and of you—that our Arthur has gone from us?'

"'No, no,' said Lancelot, 'it is not true.  I
will not let you say such things of yourself,
even though you say them of me.  We did
nothing that was wrong, you and I.  They
charged us with some plot—I do not know
what it was, and they did not know themselves.
Then I saved you and I saved myself, as it was
right that I should do.  The King made war
on me.  I made no war on him.  I only guarded
my knights and my people.  I would not even
have fought with Gawain, only he would have
it so.  And when I heard that the King needed
me here in England I came back to help him,
and it was too late.  But it was the traitors
who brought all this death and ruin.'

"'It was not that we did any wrong, Lancelot,'
said the Queen, 'it was that we did not do
all that was right.  You would rather be
Arthur's knight, you said, than to be King of all
the world but England.  Ah, yes, but what of
England?  Did you never wish, even in your
heart, that you were King of that?  Arthur
had noble thoughts for the good of his country
and of his people, and you swore to be faithful
in everything to him and to help him.  And so
your thoughts, Lancelot, should have been all
for the King and for his people, and so should
mine.  And were they so?  Did you never
forget these things and work and fight for your
own name and your own glory, instead of for
the glory of the King and for the good of
England?  You fought, too, many times, for my
name and for my glory, and I was foolish and
let you do it, when my thoughts, too, should
have been all for him and for England.  But
here alone, since we were all parted, I have had
time to think, and I have seen more clearly than
I ever saw before.  Lancelot, it is not the great
sins of the wicked people that bring ruin to the
world; it is the follies and the failings of those
who should be most true and most faithful, and
so help and save the world, but do not do it.
We were the nearest to the King, I his Queen
and you his greatest knight.  We should have
been as strong and as firm in our faithfulness to
him as he was to himself.  If we ever had
selfish and vain thoughts, thoughts that were not
for the King, for a single hour, it was a worse
wrong in us than the wrongs that those poor,
weak knights did when they let Mordred
persuade them and lead them against the King.
Do you not know why you could not see the
Holy Grail, as Galahad and Percivale and Bors
saw it?  This was why.  And they could see it
because in every thought and wish they were
true to what they and all of the Round Table
swore to the King.  And so, Lancelot, my own
best knight, as there is work for you to do
among your people, go and do it, but I must
stay here and do a little good, if I can, and pray
for you and for myself, so that some time we
may be nearer to the King than we have ever been.'

"'If you are right,' said Lancelot, 'and you
must be right—if you are right in staying here
and doing what you say that you will do, then
it is right for me, too.  I will not go back to
France.  I will find some peaceful place and
some good man, some hermit perhaps, and ask
him to let me stay with him and do as you are
doing.  Pray for me sometimes, my Queen, and
I will pray for you always.'

"Now I can guess just what you think of all
this.  You think that Lancelot had not done
any wrong at all and that the Queen was a
great deal too hard on him.  But I know that
the Queen was right.  Think over all that she
said again and you will know it too.  The
Queen and Lancelot had stood next to the
King for all these years.  They had been proud
of him and proud that they were so near to
him, and if they had been steadfast in all that
they did and said and thought, nothing could
ever have harmed him or his country while
they all lived.  But sometimes they were weak
and thoughtless, and then the King was left to
work alone.  Though this was all that they had
done amiss, it was enough.

"So Lancelot left the Queen and went on his
way.  And Guinevere stayed there at Almesbury
and lived with the nuns.  She never left
the abbey except to walk a little way among
the fields, in the woods, and along the river
that we saw when we were at Amesbury, or,
more often, to carry help or comfort to the
poor or the sick.

"After she had been with the nuns for a time
she became one of them, and no one among
them worked more than she for the people near
who needed help, and no one among them was
loved more than she.  And no one, even of
those who knew her best, could tell whether
she was happy.  But they all knew that she
was always gentle and patient, that she never
said that her work was hard, that she never
seemed to wish for her old life, and that the
sick people watched for her and the poor people
prayed for her.  And when the old abbess died
they were all sure that no one could take her
place so well as Guinevere.  And so, for what
was left of her life, Guinevere was abbess at
Almesbury.

"When Lancelot rode away from Almesbury
he felt that it was nothing to him where he
went.  He felt that he hated courts and
tournaments and battle-fields now, and he wished only
to find some place away from the busy and
noisy world, where he could live as the Queen
was living.  And so he wandered here to
Glastonbury.  And when he found Bedivere here,
when Bedivere had told him all about the great
battle, and when he had shown him the grave
in the chapel where he believed that King
Arthur was buried, then Lancelot begged the
abbot to let him stay here and be a monk with
the rest of them as long as he lived.  And the
abbot and Bedivere were both glad to have
him stay.  So Lancelot, too, lived his life among
his brother monks and among the poor and the
sick, and they all learned to love him, as, long
ago, all the good knights in Arthur's court had
learned to love him.

"Bors and his fellows waited for Lancelot at
Dover for a long time.  At last Bors sent the
army back to France, with all the knights
except a few who were the best friends of
Lancelot.  With these he set out through England to
search for him.  They searched for a long time
and at last they found him.  And when they
saw that he was a monk they said that they
would all stay at Glastonbury and be monks too.

"When Lancelot had been at Glastonbury
for a long time he had a dream one night.  He
dreamed that an angel stood beside him and
said to him: 'Lancelot, take all your fellows
here who were knights of the Round Table
to-morrow and go to Almesbury.  When you
come there the abbess, Queen Guinevere, will
be dead.  Bring her here and bury her in the
chapel beside the King.'  And twice more that
same night Lancelot had this dream.

"In the morning Lancelot told the abbot of
his dream, and the abbot said that it would be
best for him to take his fellows with him and
go to Almesbury, as he had been told to do.
So they all set out, and when they came to the
abbey at Almesbury the nuns knew who they
were and why they had come, without being
told.  For they said: 'Our abbess died not an
hour ago, and she told us that after she was
dead the monk who used to be Sir Lancelot
of the Lake would come for her and would
bury her at Glastonbury, beside the King.
She had been told of it in a dream.'

"So Lancelot and his fellows took the body
of the Queen back with them to Glastonbury.
There they made another grave before the
altar in the chapel, beside the grave of King
Arthur, and buried Queen Guinevere in it.

"And after this was done Lancelot would
scarcely leave that chapel.  He was there for
nearly all of every day and much of every
night, kneeling over the graves of the King
and the Queen and praying.  He would eat
scarcely anything and he slept but little.  And
so he grew thin and pale and weak.  The abbot
and his friends could not comfort him or make
him eat, and at last he told them that he should
live only a little longer.  'When I am dead,'
he said, 'take me and bury me in the chapel of
my own old castle of Joyous Gard.  I would
far rather lie here in your chapel, near my King
and my Queen, but years ago I made a vow
that I would be buried in Joyous Gard, and I
must keep that vow, so take me there.'

"That night the abbot awoke some of the
monks by laughing aloud in his sleep.  They
went to the abbot's bed and he awoke and said:
'I have had the most beautiful dream that I
have ever had in my life.'

"'What was it?' said Bors.

"'I dreamed,' the abbot said, 'that I saw
Lancelot in the midst of a great company of
angels.  More angels there were than I ever
saw of men in an army.  Some of them lifted
Lancelot up and they all rose to Heaven.  I
could see Lancelot's face as they went, and it
was full of peace and gladness.  They came
near the gates of Heaven and the gates were
opened for them and they all passed in.  And
as they passed I could see the great light that
shone out and I could hear voices singing, and
the gates were closed and then I awoke.'

"Then they all went to Lancelot's bed.  He
did not awake when they came to him, as the
abbot had done.  He lay still and his face
was full of peace and gladness and he was dead.

"They took him the next day, all his friends
and the abbot with them, and they journeyed
slowly till they came to Joyous Gard.  There
they buried him and then they journeyed
slowly back again to Glastonbury.  They did
not talk much as they went, but now and then
they spoke a little, sadly, as people will at such
times, of the older and happier days.  To Bors
and to some of the others it seemed only a
little while since a hundred and fifty knights sat
at the Round Table in the hall at Camelot.
Here were some of the knights of the Round
Table still, but the glory of it had passed away
with the King and Galahad and Gawain and
Lancelot."





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.. _`"REXQUE FUTURUS"`:

.. _`"On toward the gold and the purple in the west"`:

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   :alt: "On toward the gold and the purple in the west"

   "On toward the gold and the purple in the west"

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   CHAPTER XIX


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   "REXQUE FUTURUS"

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We were at sea on our way home.  We had
left Southampton, where Arthur embarked
when he went to fight the Emperor of Rome,
and all day we had made our swift way west
through the British Channel.  When we came
up on deck after dinner we had just passed the
Scilly Islands.  Dark and rough and hard they
stood up out of the sea behind us, and a pale
mist was just beginning to wrap them around
and hide them a little from sight.  Before us
all the air was clear.  The sun was just setting
and was filling the sky with a dozen lovely hues
of rose and violet and turning the water into
tossing and tumbling gold.

"See," I said, "there are the Scilly Islands.
They are all that is left of that lost land of
Lyonnesse, Tristram's country, that used to
reach from here back to the Land's End.  The
rest of it is sunk deep down under the water.
This is all of Lyonnesse that we can ever see."

Helen did not seem to care very greatly even
for this.  She was thinking of the last of our
stories.  "Was King Arthur really buried,"
she said, "there in the Abbey of Glastonbury?"

"It is not easy to answer that," I said.  "It
seems to me that I have read enough books
about King Arthur to fill this ship, yet I never
could see that the writers of them had settled
among themselves whether he was buried there
or not.  If we care to believe that he was, I
think we may as well believe it."

"But do you believe it?"

"Yes, I believe it."

"Then he never came back, the way he said
he would, and the way the people believed he
would?"

"No, he never came back."

"And he never will come back, the way the
stories said?"

"Oh, yes, I think he will."

For a few minutes Helen watched the water
that was whirling by the side of the ship and I
looked at the colors of the sea and the sky, that
were growing brighter still.  Then she said:
"But if King Arthur really died and really
was buried at Glastonbury and the three
Queens didn't cure his wound at all, how can
he come back?"

"I don't know whether I can make you see
it quite as I do," I said, "but I will try.  You
know what it was that King Arthur tried to
do.  I have told you all these stories very
badly, if you do not.  He tried to save his
people from the harms and the wrongs that they
suffered.  He tried to make all of them, the
rich and the poor, the lords and the common
people, good and brave and strong, true and
gentle and noble.  And he did make them
better and happier than they were before.  But
the time had not come for all that he wished.
After he passed away things got to be as bad
almost, as they had been before.  Some people,
here in our own time, think that the world is
not growing any better.  That is because they
look back only a few years, perhaps a hundred,
and they do not see any change.  There has
been a change, though they do not see it.  But
they would see it, if they would look back to
those fearful old days before Arthur came, yes,
or half way back, for there were days then that
were not much better.  They would see then
how selfish and how cruel men were and what
wicked and heartless things they would do for
a little power or a little gain.

"This was what Arthur tried to change, and
he did change it partly, for a little while.  But
it was too soon to change it altogether.  When
he was gone everything soon came to be
nearly as it was before.  Yet it was never quite
the same again, perhaps.  Other good men
came, not with the strength of Arthur, yet
with a strength of their own.  And they passed
away too and left England and the world a
little better than they had found them.  Slowly
and slowly, yet surely and surely, men have
thought more, learned more, worked more, and
so, slowly and slowly, yet surely and surely,
they have grown wiser and juster and stronger,
and so, too, they have grown freer and better
and happier.

"The men of England and of our own country
and of all the world are not yet what
Arthur would have had them.  They are still far
from it, perhaps, yet they are nearer to it, and
they are always getting nearer still.  The way
is long and it seems hopeless, sometimes, but it
is not hopeless.  And in some great, good time,
far off, when this England and our own country
and all the world come to be as just and noble
and happy as Arthur tried to make his
people—then cannot men say: 'King Arthur is not
dead any more; he has come back and is
among us again, for it is his will that guides
us and it is his law that rules us now?'  Do
you see now how Arthur did not die, but only
passed away, to come again?  And do you see
how he may come again, even though they
buried him there at Glastonbury?"

"I don't know," Helen said, after she had
thought for a minute.  "I don't think I quite
understand it, and any way, I would rather you
would tell stories than talk like that."

But I had no more stories to tell just then,
and so we only stood and watched the water
and the sky, while the ship carried us along,
farther and farther away from the dim, dark
rocks, with the fog around them, and on toward
the gold and the purple in the west.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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   Charles Scribner's Sons'

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   New and Standard Books for
   Young Readers for 1897-98...

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   MRS. BURNETT'S FAMOUS JUVENILES

An entirely new edition of Mrs. Burnett's famous
juveniles from new plates, with all the original
illustrations.  Bound in a beautiful new cloth
binding designed by R. B. Birch, and sold at very much
reduced prices.

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LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY

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TWO LITTLE PILGRIMS' PROGRESS

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SARA CREWE and LITTLE SAINT ELIZABETH AND OTHER STORIES (in one vol.)

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PICCINO AND OTHER CHILD STORIES

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GIOVANNI AND THE OTHER

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*Five Volumes, 12mo, each, $1.25*

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The original editions can still be supplied at the former prices:

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LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.  Beautifully illustrated by REGINALD B. BIRCH.
Square 8vo, $2.00.

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TWO LITTLE PILGRIMS' PROGRESS.  A STORY OF THE CITY BEAUTIFUL.
By Mrs. FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.  Illustrated by REGINALD B. BIRCH.
Uniform with "Fauntleroy," etc.  Square 8vo, $1.50.

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SARA CREWE; OR, WHAT HAPPENED AT MISS MINCHIN'S.  Richly and fully
illustrated by REGINALD B. BIRCH.  Square 8vo, $1.00.

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LITTLE SAINT ELIZABETH, AND OTHER STORIES.  With 12 full-page
drawings by REGINALD B. BIRCH.  Square 8vo, $1.50.

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GIOVANNI AND THE OTHER: CHILDREN WHO HAVE MADE STORIES.  With
9 full-page illustrations by REGINALD B. BIRCH.  Square 8vo, $1.50.

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PICCINO, AND OTHER CHILD STORIES.  Fully illustrated by REGINALD B. BIRCH.
Square 8vo, $1.50.


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   \G. \A. HENTY'S POPULAR STORIES

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   New Volumes for 1897-98.  Each, crown 8vo, handsomely illustrated, $1.50.

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Mr. Henty, the most popular writer of Books of
Adventure in England, adds three new volumes to his
list this fall—books that will delight thousands of
boys on this side who have become his ardent admirers.

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WITH FREDERICK THE GREAT.  A TALE OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.  With
12 full-page illustrations.  12mo, $1.50.

This story, more than any other of Mr. Henty's,
follows closely the historic lines,
and no better description of the memorable battles
of Rossbach, Leuthen, Prague,
Zorndorf, Hochkirch, and Torgau can be found
anywhere than is given in this
volume.  Through the historic part there runs
the record of the daring and
hazardous adventures of the hero, so that the
charm of romance is given to the
whole narrative.  It is one of the most
important volumes Mr. Henty has written.

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A MARCH ON LONDON.  A STORY OF WAT TYLER'S RISING.  With 8 full-page
illustrations by W. H. MARGETSON.  12mo, $1.50.

This book weaves together, in a most interesting way,
the story of Wat Tyler's
rebellion under King Richard, the civil war in
Flanders which occurred soon
after, and the ill-planned attack upon the French
led by the Bishop of Norfolk.
The whole story is singularly interesting,
covering as it does a period of history
which is but little known and which is well worth narrating.

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WITH MOORE AT CORUNNA.  A STORY OF THE PENINSULAR WAR.  With 12
full-page illustrations by WAL. PAGET.  12mo, $1.50.

A bright Irish lad, Terence O'Connor,
is living with his widowed father, Captain
O'Connor of the Mayo Fusiliers, with the regiment,
at the time when the Peninsular War against Napoleon began.
Under the command of Sir John Moore, he
shared in the same marching and sharp fighting
which that expedition experienced up to the battle
of Corunna.  By his bravery and great usefulness, in spite
of his youth, he received a commission as
colonel in the Portuguese army, and
during the remainder of the war rendered great
services, being mentioned twice
in the general orders of the Duke of Wellington.
The whole story is full of exciting
military experiences and gives a most
careful and accurate account of the
conduct of the campaigns.



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   MR. HENTY'S OTHER BOOKS

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Each volume with numerous illustrations; handsomely bound.
Olivine edges.  12mo.  $1.50.

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"Mr. Henty's books never fail to interest boy readers.
Among writers of stories
of adventure he stands in the very first rank."—*Academy*, London.

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"No country nor epoch of history is there
which Mr. Henty does not know, and
what is really remarkable is that he always
writes well and interestingly.  Boys
like stirring adventures, and
Mr. Henty is a master of this method of
composition."—*New York Times*.

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AT AGINCOURT.  A TALE OF THE WHITE HOODS OF PARIS.  With 12 full-page
illustrations by WAL. PAGET.

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COCHRANE THE DAUNTLESS.  A TALE OF THE EXPLOITS OF LORD
COCHRANE IN SOUTH AMERICAN WATERS.  With 12 full-page illustrations by
W. H. MARGETSON.

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ON THE IRRAWADDY.  A STORY OF THE FIRST BURMESE WAR.  With 8
full-page illustrations by W. H. OVEREND.

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THROUGH RUSSIAN SNOWS.  A STORY OF NAPOLEON'S RETREAT FROM
MOSCOW.  With 8 full-page illustrations by W. H. OVEREND.

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A KNIGHT OF THE WHITE CROSS.  A TALE OF THE SIEGE OF RHODES.
With 12 full-page illustrations by RALPH PEACOCK.

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THE TIGER OF MYSORE.  A STORY OF THE WAR WITH TIPPOO SAID.  With
12 full-page illustrations by W. H. MARGETSON.

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IN THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES.  A STORY OF ADVENTURE IN COLORADO.

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WHEN LONDON BURNED.  A STORY OF RESTORATION TIMES AND THE GREAT
FIRE.

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WULF THE SAXON.  A STORY OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

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ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S EVE.  A TALE OF THE HUGUENOT WARS.

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THROUGH THE SIKH WAR.  A TALE OF THE CONQUEST OF THE PUNJAUB.

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A JACOBITE EXILE.  BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG ENGLISHMAN IN
THE SERVICE OF CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN.

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CONDEMNED AS A NIHILIST.  A STORY OF ESCAPE FROM SIBERIA.

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BERIC THE BRITON.  A STORY OF THE ROMAN INVASION.

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IN GREEK WATERS.  A STORY OF THE GRECIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
[1821-1827].

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THE DASH FOR KHARTOUM.  A TALE OF THE NILE EXPEDITION.

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REDSKIN AND COWBOY.  A TALE OF THE WESTERN PLAINS.

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HELD FAST FOR ENGLAND.  A TALE OF THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR.



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   SOME OF THE NEWEST BOOKS

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WILL SHAKESPEARE'S LITTLE LAD.  By IMOGEN CLARK.  With
illustrations and cover design by R. B. Birch.  12mo, $1.50.

A story, full of warm color and brisk movement,
of Stratford life in Shakespeare's
day, the local atmosphere being reflected
with rare fidelity, and the hero, the
poet's son, being drawn with sympathy and charm.

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CHILD POEMS.  By EUGENE FIELD.  With an introduction by KENNETH
GRAHAME and profusely illustrated by CHARLES ROBINSON.
Uniform with Robert
Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verses,"
also illustrated by Charles Robinson.  12mo, $1.50.

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THE STEVENSON SONG BOOK.  VERSES FROM "A CHILD'S GARDEN," by
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.  With music by various composers.
A companion volume to the Field-DeKoven song book printed
last year.  Large 8vo, $2.00.

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AN OLD-FIELD SCHOOL GIRL.  By MARION HARLAND.  With 8 full-page
illustrations.  12mo, $1.25.

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LORDS OF THE WORLD.  By ALFRED J. CHURCH.  A STORY OF THE FALL OF
CARTHAGE AND CORINTH.  With 12 full-page illustrations by RALPH PEACOCK.
12mo, $1.50.

The scene of this story centres in the overthrow
and destruction of Carthage by
the Romans.  The story is full of valuable
historical details and the interest never flags.

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HEROES OF OUR NAVY.  By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.  Illustrated.  12mo.
In press.

Never has this entertaining writer been more
felicitous than in the present volume.

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THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MOHAWK.  By W. J. HENDERSON.  Illustrated
by HARRY EDWARDS.  12mo, $1.25.

The book is crowded with dramatic incident—mutiny, shipwreck, Farragut's
great fight in Mobile Bay—and the narrative is as simple as the events and
characters are entertaining.



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   KIRK MUNROE'S STIRRING TALES

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   *THE WHITE CONQUEROR SERIES*

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WITH CROCKETT AND BOWIE
THE WHITE CONQUERORS
AT WAR WITH PONTIAC
THROUGH SWAMP AND GLADE

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Each, illustrated, 12mo, $1.25.  The complete set, 4 vols.,
in a box, $5.00.

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   *JUST PUBLISHED*

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WITH CROCKETT AND BOWIE; OR, FIGHTING FOR THE LONE STAR FLAG.
A TALE OF TEXAS.  With 8 full-page illustrations by VICTOR PERARD.

The story is of the Texas revolution in 1835,
when American Texans under Sam
Houston, Bowie, Crockett, and Travis,
fought for relief from the intolerable
tyranny of the Mexican Santa Ana.
The hero, Rex Hardin, son of a Texas ranchman,
and graduate of an American military school,
takes a prominent part in the
heroic defense of the Alamo, the terrible scenes
at Golead, and the final triumph
at San Jacinto.  The historical side of the story
has been carefully studied and its
localities rendered familiar by a special trip
to Texas undertaken by the author
for that purpose within a year.

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   PREVIOUS VOLUMES

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THROUGH SWAMP AND GLADE.  A TALE OF THE SEMINOLE WAR.  With 8
full-page illustrations by VICTOR PERARD.  12mo, $1.25.

In this new story Mr. Munroe opens to view
an exceedingly interesting period of
American history—the period of the Seminole
War in Florida.  Coacoochee, the
hero of the story, is a young Indian of noble birth,
the son of Philip, the chieftain
of the Seminoles.  He is a boy at the time
of the beginning of the Seminole
troubles and grows up to lead his tribe
in the long struggle which resulted in the
Indians being driven from the north of Florida
down to the distant southern
wilderness.  It is full of strange adventure,
of stirring incident and rapid action,
and it is a true and faithful picture
of a period of history little known to young
readers.

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AT WAR WITH PONTIAC; OR, THE TOTEM OF THE BEAR.  A TALE OF
REDCOAT AND REDSKIN.  With 8 full-page illustrations by
J. FINNEMORE.  12mo, $1.25.

A story of old days in America when Detroit
was a frontier town and the
shores of Lake Erie were held by hostile
Indians, under Pontiac.  The hero,
Donald Hester, goes in search of his sister
Edith, who has been captured by the
Indians.  Strange and terrible are his
experiences; for he is wounded, taken
prisoner, condemned to be burned, and
contrives to escape.  In the end there is
peace between Pontiac and the English,
and all things terminate happily for the
hero.  One dares not skip a page of this entralling story.

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THE WHITE CONQUERORS.  A TALE OF TOLTEC AND AZTEC.  With 8
full-page illustrations by W. S. STACEY.  12mo.  $1.25.

This story deals with the Conquest of Mexico
by Cortes and his Spaniards, the
"White Conquerors," who, after many deeds
of valor, pushed their way into the
great Aztec kingdom and established their
power in the wondrous city where
Montezuma reigned in barbaric splendor.


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   BOOKS BY WILLIAM HENRY FROST

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   *JUST PUBLISHED*

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THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE.  Illustrated and cover designed by
S. R. BURLEIGH.  12mo, $1.50.

Mr. Frost's volumes of folk-lore stories have
achieved a deserved popularity, and
this last one, dealing with the ever-fascinating
theme of the Round Table and its
knights, is equal to either of his earlier books.

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   MR. FROST'S FORMER BOOKS

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THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR.  STORIES FROM THE LAND OF THE ROUND
TABLE.  Illustrated by S. R. BURLEIGH.  12mo, $1.50.

Mr. Frost has had the happy idea of making a
journey to the different places connected
with the Arthurian romances by history or legend,
and of relating the ever
new Round Table Tales on their sites,
to the same little girl, now somewhat older,
to whom he told his charming Wagner stories.

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THE WAGNER STORY BOOK.  FIRELIGHT TALES OF THE GREAT MUSIC
DRAMAS.  Illustrated by SIDNEY R. BURLEIGH.  12mo, $1.50.

"A successful attempt to make the romantic
themes of the music drama intelligible
to young readers.  The author has full command
of his subject, and the style
is easy, graceful, and simple."—*Boston Beacon*.


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   ROBERT GRANT'S TWO BOOKS FOR BOYS

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JACK HALL; OR, THE SCHOOL DAYS OF AN AMERICAN BOY.
Illustrated by F. G. ATTWOOD.  12mo, $1.25.

"A better book for boys has never been written.
It is pure, clean, and healthy
and has throughout a vigorous action that
holds the reader breathlessly."—*Boston Herald*.

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JACK IN THE BUSH; OR, A SUMMER ON A SALMON RIVER.
Illustrated by F. T. MERRILL.  12mo, $1.25.

"A clever book for boys.  It is the story
of the camp life of a lot of boys, and is
destined to please every boy reader.
It is attractively illustrated."—*Detroit Free Press*.


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   THE KANTER GIRLS

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By MARY L. B. BRANCH.  Illustrated by HELEN M. ARMSTRONG.
Square 12mo.  $1.50.

The adventures of Jane and Prue, two small
sisters, among different peoples of
the imaginative world—dryads, snow-children,
Kobolds, etc.—aided by their
invisible rings, their magic boat, and their
wonderful birds, are described by the
author with great naturalness and a true gift
for story-telling.  The numerous
illustrations are very attractive, and in
thorough sympathy with the text.

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