dead, great was the moan he made in his
sorrow. With great pomp and splendour he buried her, and for seven years
lived a lonely life, mourning her.

At the end of that time he married again, but the stepmother hated little
Tristram, the heir, and longed to destroy him, that her own child might be
king. So one day she placed some poison in a cup for him to drink, but
her own child, being thirsty, drank the poison and died.

The queen, broken-hearted at the loss of her boy, and horror-stricken at
what she had done, hated her stepson more than ever after this, and once
again she tried to kill him in the same manner. This time, though,
King Melodias, spying the tempting-looking drink, took it up and was about
to drink it, when the queen, seeing what he was about to do, rushed in and
snatched it from him. Then he discovered her guilt, and his anger knew no
bounds.

"Thou traitress!" he cried, "confess what manner of drink this is, or here
and now I will run this sword through thy heart!"

So she confessed, and was tried before the barons, and by their judgment
was given over to be burnt to death. The faggots were prepared, the queen
was bound to the stake, and they were beginning to light the fire when
little Tristram, flinging himself on his knees, besought his father with
such entreaties to pardon her, that the king could not refuse. So the
queen was released, and in time the king forgave her.

But, though he forgave her, he could never trust her again, and to protect
little Tristram from her, he was sent to France, where he continued for
some time, learning to joust and hunt, and do all things that were right
and brave and noble; and seven years passed before he returned to his home
in Lyonesse.

Lyonesse was the furthest point of Cornwall; it joined what we now call
'Land's End,' and stretched out through the sea until it reached the
Scilly Islands, a wild, rugged, beautiful spot, washed on either side by
the glorious Atlantic sea. One day, though, that glorious Atlantic rose
like a mountain above Lyonesse, and where in the morning had been a
beautiful city with churches and houses, and fertile lands, in the evening
there was only a raging, boiling sea, bearing on its bosom fragments of
the lost world it had devoured. This, though, was long after the time of
which I am writing now.

For two years after his return from France, Tristram lived in Lyonesse,
and then it happened that King Anguish of Ireland se