Heraud, the pride of
the nation, was abroad; and the great and valiant Guy, Earl of
Warwick, was gone on a pilgrimage. The monarch was perplexed and
sorrowful; but an angel appeared to him and comforted him.

In conformity with the injunctions of this gracious messenger, the
king, attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of
Chichester, placed himself at the north gate of the city (Winchester)
at the hour of prime. Divers poor people and pilgrims entered thereat,
and among the rest appeared a man of noble visage and stalwart frame,
but wan withal, pale with abstinence, and macerated by reason of
journeying barefoot. His beard was venerably long and he rested on a
staff; he wore a pilgrim's garb, and on his bare and venerable head
was strung a chaplet of white roses. Bending low, he passed the gate,
but the king warned by the vision, hastened to him, and entreated him
"by his love for Jesus Christ, by the devotion of his pilgrimage, and
for the preservation of all England, to do battle with the giant." The
Palmer thus conjured, underwent the combat, and was victorious.

After a solemn procession to the Cathedral, and thanksgiving therein,
when he offered his weapon to God and the patron of the Church, before
the High Altar, the pilgrim withdrew, having revealed himself to none
but the king, and that under a solemn pledge of secrecy. He bent his
course towards Warwick, and unknown in his disguise, took alms at the
hands of his own lady--for, reader, this meek and holy pilgrim, was
none other than the wholesale slayer, whose deeds we have been
contemplating--and then retired to a solitary place hard by--

"Where with his hand he hew'd a house,
Out of a craggy rock of stone;
And lived like a palmer poor,
Within that cave himself alone."

Nor was this at all an unusual conclusion to a life of butchery; all
the heroes of romance turned hermits; and as they all, at least all of
Arthur's Round Table, were gifted with a very striking development of
the organ of combativeness, their profound piety at the end of their
career might not improbably give rise to a very common adage of these
days regarding sinners and saints.

But here was a theme for Tapestry-workers! a real original, genuine
English romance; for though the only pieces now extant be, or may be,
translated from the French, still there are many concurring
circumstances to prove that the original, often quoted by Chaucer, was
an a