ich he was
bound in honour to guard. Therefore he fought manfully against
depression of spirits, as one of the destroyers of life, and even
encouraged hope, frequently looking at the fatal white spot on his
shoulder, and trying to persuade himself that it was not spreading.

In this state of mind Bladud arrived one day at the abode of the hunter
of the Hot Swamp. It was not, indeed, close to the springs which caused
the swamp, but stood in a narrow sequestered gully quite five miles
distant from it. The spot had been chosen as one which was not likely
to be discovered by wanderers, and could be easily defended if it should
be found. Moreover, its owner, as Bladud had been warned, was a fierce,
morose man, who loved solitude and resented interference of any kind,
and this was so well known in the thinly-peopled neighbourhood that
every one kept carefully out of his way.

Sometimes this eccentric hunter appeared at the nearest village--twenty
miles distant from his home--with some pigs to barter for the few
commodities which he wanted from time to time; but he and his horse,
cow, and dogs ate up all the remaining produce of his small farm--if
such it might be called.

It was a beautiful evening when the prince walked up to the door of the
little hut, in front of which its owner was standing, eyeing him with a
forbidding scowl as he approached.

He was in truth a strange and formidable man, such as one would rather
not meet with in a lonely place. There appear to have been giants in
those days; for this hunter of the Hot Swamp was nearly, if not quite,
as tall as Bladud himself, and to all appearance fully as strong of
limb. A mass of black hair covered his head and chin; a skin
hunting-shirt his body, and a hairy boar-skin was thrown across his
broad shoulders. Altogether, he seemed to his visitor the very
personification of ferocity. A huge bow, ready strung, leaned against
his hut. As Bladud advanced with his own bow unstrung, the man
apparently scorned to take it up, but he grasped and leaned upon a staff
proportioned to his size.

Anxious to propitiate this mysterious being, the prince approached with
steady, unaffected ease of manner, and a look of goodwill which might
have conciliated almost any one; but it had no effect on the hunter.

"What want ye here?" he demanded, when his visitor was near enough.

"To enter your service."

"_My_ service!" exclaimed the man with a look of surprise that for a