a
platter with two handfuls of parched pease upon it from the neighbouring
shelf, and placing it upon the table, he added, "your supper is here."

The knight shrugged his shoulders, and leaving the hut, brought in his
horse, (which in the interim he had fastened to a tree,) unsaddled him
with much attention, and spread upon the steed's weary back his own
mantle.

The hermit was apparently somewhat moved to compassion by the anxiety as
well as address which the stranger displayed in tending his horse; for,
muttering something about provender left for the keeper's palfrey, he
dragged out of a recess a bundle of forage, which he spread before the
knight's charger, and immediately afterwards shook down a quantity of
dried fern in the corner which he had assigned for the rider's couch.
The knight returned him thanks for his courtesy; and, this duty done,
both resumed their seats by the table, whereon stood the trencher of
pease placed between them. The hermit, after a long grace, which had
once been Latin, but of which original language few traces remained,
excepting here and there the long rolling termination of some word or
phrase, set example to his guest, by modestly putting into a very large
mouth, furnished with teeth which might have ranked with those of a
boar both in sharpness and whiteness, some three or four dried pease, a
miserable grist as it seemed for so large and able a mill.

The knight, in order to follow so laudable an example, laid aside his
helmet, his corslet, and the greater part of his armour, and showed to
the hermit a head thick-curled with yellow hair, high features, blue
eyes, remarkably bright and sparkling, a mouth well formed, having an
upper lip clothed with mustachoes darker than his hair, and bearing
altogether the look of a bold, daring, and enterprising man, with which
his strong form well corresponded.

The hermit, as if wishing to answer to the confidence of his guest,
threw back his cowl, and showed a round bullet head belonging to a man
in the prime of life. His close-shaven crown, surrounded by a circle
of stiff curled black hair, had something the appearance of a parish
pinfold begirt by its high hedge. The features expressed nothing of
monastic austerity, or of ascetic privations; on the contrary, it was
a bold bluff countenance, with broad black eyebrows, a well-turned
forehead, and cheeks as round and vermilion as those of a trumpeter,
from which descended a long and curly bla