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Lady:  Seest thou not that there is a man in the hall?
 Yea, she said,  I see him yonder, kneeling on his knees; let him come nigher
and give some account of himself.
So Walter stood up and drew nigh, and stood there, all shamefaced and
confused, looking on those twain, and wondering at the beauty of the Lady. As
for the man, who was slim, and black-
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haired, and straight-featured, for all his goodliness Walter accounted him
little, and nowise deemed him to look chieftain-like.
Now the Lady spake not to Walter any more than erst; but at last the man said:
 Why doest thou not kneel as thou didst erewhile?
Walter was on the point of giving him back a fierce answer; but the Lady spake
and said:  Nay, friend, it matters not whether he kneel or stand; but he may
say, if he will, what he would have of me, and wherefore he is come hither.
Then spake Walter, for as wroth and ashamed as he was:  Lady, I have strayed
into this land, and have come to thine house as I suppose, and if I be not
welcome, I may well depart straightway, and seek a way out of thy land, if
thou wouldst drive me thence, as well as out of thine house.
Thereat the Lady turned and looked on him, and when her eyes met his, he felt
a pang of fear and desire mingled shoot through his heart. This time she spoke
to him; but coldly, without either wrath or any thought of him:  Newcomer,
she said,  I have not bidden thee hither; but here mayst thou abide a while if
thou wilt; nevertheless, take heed that here is no King s Court. There is,
forsooth, a folk that serveth me (or, it may be, more than one), of whom thou
wert best to know nought. Of others I have but two servants, whom thou wilt
see; and the one is a strange creature, who should scare thee or scathe thee
with a good will, but of a good will shall serve nought save me; the other is
a woman, a thrall, of little avail, save that, being compelled, she will work
woman s service for me, but whom none else shall compel . . . Yea, but what is
all this to thee; or to me that I should tell it to thee? I will not drive
thee away; but if thine entertainment please thee not, make no plaint thereof
to me, but depart at thy will. Now is this talk betwixt us overlong, since, as
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thou seest, I and this King s Son are in converse together. Art thou a King s
Son?
 Nay, Lady, said Walter,  I am but of the sons of the merchants.
 It matters not, she said;  go thy ways into one of the chambers.
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And straightway she fell a-talking to the man who sat beside her concerning
the singing of the birds beneath her window in the morning; and of how she had
bathed her that day in a pool of the woodlands, when she had been heated with
hunting, and so forth; and all as if there had been none there save her and
the King s Son.
But Walter departed all ashamed, as though he had been a poor man thrust away
from a rich kinsman s door; and he said to himself that this woman was
hateful, and nought love-worthy, and that she was little like to tempt him,
despite all the fairness of her body.
No one else he saw in the house that even; he found meat and drink duly served
on a fair table, and thereafter he came on a goodly bed, and all things
needful, but no child of Adam to do him service, or bid him welcome or
warning. Nevertheless he ate, and drank, and slept, and put off thought of all
these things till the morrow, all the more as he hoped to see the kind maiden
some time betwixt sunrise and sunset on that new day.
CHAPTER XII
THE WEARING OF FOUR DAYS
IN THE WOOD BEYOND THE WORLD
He arose betimes, but found no one to greet him, neither was there any sound
of folk moving within the fair house; so he but broke his fast, and then went
forth and wandered amongst the trees, till he found him a stream to bathe in,
and after he had washed the night off him he lay down under a tree thereby for
a while, but soon turned back toward the house, lest perchance the
Maid should come thither and he should miss her.
It should be said that half a bow-shot from the house on that side (i.e. due
north thereof) was a little hazel-brake, and round about it the trees were
smaller of kind than the oaks and chestnuts he had passed through before,
being mostly of birch and quicken-beam and young ash, with
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small wood betwixt them; so now he passed through the thicket, and, coming to
the edge thereof, beheld the Lady and the King s Son walking together hand in
hand, full lovingly by seeming.
He deemed it unmeet to draw back and hide him, so he went forth past them
toward the house.
The King s Son scowled on him as he passed, but the Lady, over whose beauteous
face flickered the joyous morning smiles, took no more heed of him than if he
had been one of the trees of the wood. But she had been so high and disdainful
with him the evening before, that he thought little of that. The twain went
on, skirting the hazel-copse, and he could not choose but turn his eyes on
them, so sorely did the Lady s beauty draw them. Then befell another thing;
for behind them the boughs of the hazels parted, and there stood that little
evil thing, he or another of his kind; for he was quite unclad, save by his
fell of yellowy-brown hair, and that he was girt with a leathern girdle,
wherein was stuck an ugly two-edged knife: he stood upright a moment, and cast
his eyes at Walter and grinned, but not as if he knew him; and scarce could
Walter say whether it were the one he had seen, or another: then he cast
himself down on his belly, and fell to creeping through the long grass like a
serpent, following the footsteps of the Lady and her lover; and now, as he
crept, Walter deemed, in his loathing, that the creature was liker to a ferret
than aught else.
He crept on marvellous swiftly, and was soon clean out of sight. But Walter
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