maybe
there will be a pardon to ask of thee moreover; wherefore I fear thee."

Quoth Walter: "How may that be?"

She answered him not, but took his hand and led him down the bent. But
he said: "Thou sayest, rest; but are we now out of all peril of the
chase?"

She said: "I cannot tell till I know what hath befallen her. If she be
not to hand to set on her trackers, they will scarce happen on us now; if
it be not for that one."

And she shuddered, and he felt her hand change as he held it.

Then she said: "But peril or no peril, needs must we rest; for I tell
thee again, what I have to say to thee burneth my bosom for fear of thee,
so that I can go no further until I have told thee."

Then he said: "I wot not of this Queen and her mightiness and her
servants. I will ask thereof later. But besides the others, is there
not the King's Son, he who loves thee so unworthily?"

She paled somewhat, and said: "As for him, there had been nought for thee
to fear in him, save his treason: but now shall he neither love nor hate
any more; he died last midnight."

"Yea, and how?" said Walter.

"Nay," she said, "let me tell my tale all together once for all, lest
thou blame me overmuch. But first we will wash us and comfort us as best
we may, and then amidst our resting shall the word be said."

By then were they come down to the stream-side, which ran fair in pools
and stickles amidst rocks and sandy banks. She said: "There behind the
great grey rock is my bath, friend; and here is thine; and lo! the
uprising of the sun!"

So she went her ways to the said rock, and he bathed him, and washed the
night off him, and by then he was clad again she came back fresh and
sweet from the water, and with her lap full of cherries from a wilding
which overhung her bath. So they sat down together on the green grass
above the sand, and ate the breakfast of the wilderness: and Walter was
full of content as he watched her, and beheld her sweetness and her
loveliness; yet were they, either of them, somewhat shy and shamefaced
each with the other; so that he did but kiss her hands once and again,
and though she shrank not from him, yet had she no boldness to cast
herself into his arms.

CHAPTER XXII: OF THE DWARF AND THE PARDON

Now she began to say: "My friend, now shall I tell thee what I have done
for thee and me; and if thou have a mind to blame me, and punish me, yet
remember first, that what I have done has been for t