therine is new and stout-builded, and
should be lucky, whereas she is under the ward of her who is the saint
called upon in the church where thou wert christened, and myself before
thee; and thy mother, and my father and mother all lie under the chancel
thereof, as thou wottest."

Therewith the elder rose up and went his ways about his business, and
there was no more said betwixt him and his son on this matter.

CHAPTER II: GOLDEN WALTER TAKES SHIP TO SAIL THE SEAS

When Walter went down to the Katherine next morning, there was the
skipper Geoffrey, who did him reverence, and made him all cheer, and
showed him his room aboard ship, and the plenteous goods which his father
had sent down to the quays already, such haste as he had made. Walter
thanked his father's love in his heart, but otherwise took little heed to
his affairs, but wore away the time about the haven, gazing listlessly on
the ships that were making them ready outward, or unlading, and the
mariners and aliens coming and going: and all these were to him as the
curious images woven on a tapestry.

At last when he had wellnigh come back again to the Katherine, he saw
there a tall ship, which he had scarce noted before, a ship all-boun,
which had her boats out, and men sitting to the oars thereof ready to tow
her outwards when the hawser should be cast off, and by seeming her
mariners were but abiding for some one or other to come aboard.

So Walter stood idly watching the said ship, and as he looked, lo! folk
passing him toward the gangway. These were three; first came a dwarf,
dark-brown of hue and hideous, with long arms and ears exceeding great
and dog-teeth that stuck out like the fangs of a wild beast. He was clad
in a rich coat of yellow silk, and bare in his hand a crooked bow, and
was girt with a broad sax.

After him came a maiden, young by seeming, of scarce twenty summers; fair
of face as a flower; grey-eyed, brown-haired, with lips full and red,
slim and gentle of body. Simple was her array, of a short and strait
green gown, so that on her right ankle was clear to see an iron ring.

Last of the three was a lady, tall and stately, so radiant of visage and
glorious of raiment, that it were hard to say what like she was; for
scarce might the eye gaze steady upon her exceeding beauty; yet must
every son of Adam who found himself anigh her, lift up his eyes again
after he had dropped them, and look again on her, and yet again and yet