t a frail defence against all that,
when once the hidden should be shown, and the scantiness of the woodland
should cry on the abundance of the kingdom to bow down.

Now she came round the board and stood beside Christopher, and he turned
to her, and stood up and took her hand, in such wise that she felt the
caress of it; and joy filled her soul, as if she had been alone with him
in the wild-wood.

But he spake and said: "All ye my friends: I see and wot well that ye
would have me sit in my father's seat and be the King of Oakenrealm,
and that ye will give me help and furtherance therein to the utmost; nor
will I cast back the gift upon you; and I will say this, that when I am
King indeed, it is my meaning and my will now, that then I shall be
no less one of you good fellows and kind friends than ye have known me
hitherto; and even so I deem that ye think of me. But, good friends, it
is not to be hidden that the road ye would have me wend with you is like
to be rough; and it may well be that we shall not come to be kings or
kings' friends but men hunted, and often, maybe, men taken and slain.
Therefore, till one thing or the other come, the kingship, or the
taking, I will try to be no less joyous than now I am, and so meseemeth
shall ye; and if ye be of this mind, then shall the coming days be no
worse than the days which have been; and God wot they have been happy
enough. Now again, ye see this most fair lady, whose hand I hold; she
is my beloved and my wife; and therewithal she is the true Queen of
Meadham, and a traitor sits in her place even as a traitor sits in mine.
But I must tell you that when she took me for her beloved, she knew not,
nor did I, that I was a King's son, but she took me as a woodman and
an outcast, and as a wood-man and outcast I wooed her, trusting in the
might that was in my body, and the love that was in my heart; and now
before all you, my friends, I thank her and worship her that my body and
my love was enough for her; as, God wot, the kingship of the whole earth
should not be overmuch for her, if it lay open to her to take. But,
sweet friends, here am I talking of myself as a King wedded unto a
Queen, whereas meseemeth the chiefest gift our twin kingship hath
brought you to-night is the gift of two most mighty unfriends for you;
to wit, her foeman and mine. See ye to it, then, if the wild-wood yonder
is not a meeter dwelling for us than this your goodly hall; and fear not
to put us to the