and then turned very pale; for the full life was in
him again, and he knew her, and love drew strongly at his
heart-strings. But she looked on him kindly and said to him: "How
fares it with thee? I am sorry of thy hurt which thou hast had for
me." He said: "Forsooth, Lady, a chance knock or two is no great
matter for a lad of Upmeads. But oh! I have seen thee before." "Yea,"
she said, "twice before, fair knight." "How is that?" he said; "once I
saw thee, the fairest thing in the world, and evil men would have led
thee to slaughter; but not twice."

She smiled on him still more kindly, as if he were a dear friend, and
said simply: "I was that lad in the cloak that ye saw in the Flower de
Luce; and afterwards when ye, thou and Roger, fled away from the Burg
of the Four Friths. I had come into the Burg with my captain of war at
the peril of our lives to deliver four faithful friends of mine who
were else doomed to an evil death."

He said nought, but gazed at her face, wondering at her valiancy and
goodness. She took him by the hand now, and held it without speaking
for a little while, and he sat there still looking up into her face,
wondering at her sweetness and his happiness. Then she said, as she
drew her hand away and spake in such a voice, and so looking at him,
that every word was as a caress to him: "Thy soul is coming back to
thee, my friend, and thou art well at ease: is it not so?"

"O yea," he said, "and I woke up happily e'en now; for me-dreamed that
my gossip came to me and kissed me kindly; and she is a fair woman, but
not a young woman."

As he spoke the knight, who had come nearly noiselessly over the grass,
stood by them, holding his helm full of water, and looking grimly upon
them; but the Lady looked up at him with wide eyes wonderingly, and
Ralph, beholding her, deemed that all he had heard of her goodness was
but the very sooth. But the knight spake: "Young man, thou hast
fought with me, thou knowest not wherefore, and grim was my mood when
thou madest thine onset, and still is, so that never but once wilt thou
be nigher thy death than thou hast been this hour. But now I have
given thee life because of the asking of this lady; and therewith I
give thee leave to come thy ways with us: nay, rather I command thee to
come, for thou art my prisoner, to be kept or ransomed, or set free as
I will. But my will is that thou shalt not have thine armour and
weapons; and there is a cause for thi