whereupon we two together shall return the Holy Vessel to the chamber
and I shall not be made to suffer the severing of my two hands."

He was aghast. "They wouldn't dare cut off your hands!"

"They dare much, fair knight. Know ye naught of the customs of the
land?"

He was silent. What in the world was he going to do about her? She
would probably wait here for him until she starved to death or,
equally as distressing, until she was apprehended. Abruptly he
shrugged his shoulders--to the extent that his pauldrons
permitted--and remounted the rohorse. Why should it matter to him what
became of her? He'd returned to the Age of Chivalry to steal the
Sangraal, not to play nursemaid to damosels in distress. "Don't take
any wooden nickels now," he said.

Two tiny stars appeared in the pale regions of her eyes and twinkled
down her cheeks. "May the good Lord speed ye upon thy quest, fair
knight, and may He guard ye well."

"Oh, for Pete's sake!" Mallory said, and reaching down, pulled her up
onto Easy Money's croup. "I have a castle not far from here. I'll drop
you off, then I'll go after the Sangraal."

Her breath was warm little wind seeping through the crevices of his
gorget. "Oh, fair sir, ye be the noblest of all the knights in all the
land, and I shall serve thee faithfully for the rest of my days!"

The rohorse whinnied. _Giddy-ap, Easy Money_, Mallory encephalopathed,
and they started out.

III

Rowena fell for the _Yore_ hook, line, and sinker. Not even the modern
interior gave her pause. Those objects which happened to be beyond her
ken--and there were many of them--she interpreted as "appointments
befitting a noble knight," and as for the rooms themselves, she merely
identified them with the rooms out of her own experience that they
most closely resembled. Thus the rec-hall became "the banquet hall,"
the supply room became "the kitchen," the control room became "the
sorcerer's tower," the tourist compartments became "the sleeping
tower," Mallory's bedroom-office became "the lord's quarters," the
lavatory became "the chapel," and the generator room became "the
dungeon." Only two things disconcerted her: the absence of servants
and the fact that Easy Money was stabled in the banquet hall. Mallory
got around the first by telling her that he had given the servants a
leave of absence, and she herself got around the second by declaring
it to be no more than fitting for such a splendid steed to be accorded
sp