T.H. White's "The Once and Future King" Chapters 1-10 279 words

He undulated back toward the voice in one terrific shove, to show off.

He was brought up short by the rope which was wound round the tree--the vacuous brachet meanwhile giving a melancholy yelp--and fell off his horse with a tremendous clang.

They turned round and marched off to their corners, seething with indignation.

Why, I believe Sir Ector would have been gladder to get a by-our-lady tilting blue for your tutor, that swings himself along on his knuckles like an anthropoid ape, rather than a magician of known probity and international reputation with first-class honours from every European university.

The Wart was familiar with the nests of Spar-hark and Gos, the crazy conglomerations of sticks and oddments which had been taken over from squirrels or crows, and he knew how the twigs and the tree foot were splashed with white mutes, old bones, muddy feathers and castings.

For every
season he had the best place, like a cat, and he yelled and ran and fought and upset people and snoozed and daydreamed and pretended he was a Knight, without stopping.

He was a sort of head hound, and it was his business to take them out every day for walks, to pull thorns out of their feet, keep cankers out of their ears, bind the smaller bones that got dislocated, dose them for worms, isolate and nurse them in distemper, arbitrate in their quarrels and to sleep curled up among them at night.

He was dressed in a flowing gown with fur tippets which had the signs of the zodiac embroidered over it, with various cabalistic signs, such as triangles with eyes in them, queer crosses, leaves of trees, bones of birds and animals, and a planetarium whose stars shone like bits of looking-glass with the sun on them.

They were unusual spectacles, being without ear pieces, but shaped rather like scissors or like the antennae of the tarantula wasp.

Water snails slowly ambled about on the stems of the lilies or under their leaves, while fresh-water mussels lay on the bottom doing nothing in particular.

In a series of infuriating removes they had come nearer and nearer, till they were further from the castle than the boy had ever been, and now they had reached it quite.

Here he held out his hand to the owl, who came waddling like a goose along the corkindrill's back--he waddled with this rolling gait so as to keep his tail from being damaged--and hopped down to Merlyn's finger with every sign of reluctance.

"Good," said the tench, as they collided end to end.

Without further words, the two gentlemen retreated to the opposite ends of the clearing, fewtered Iheir spears, and prepared to hurtle together in the preliminary charge.

The pots were labelled Cardamum, Ginger, Barley Sugar, Wrangle, For a Snurt, For the Craye, Vertigo, etc.

Then there were stuffed birds, popinjays, and maggot-pies and kingfishers, and peacocks with all their feathers but two, and tiny birds like beetles, and a reputed phoenix which smelt of incense and cinnamon.

Only, during an utter silence of five minutes, they could hear the incontinent priest snivelling and hiccoughing to himself.

Only, in the far corner of the room, which had been netted off for Cully--loose there, unhooded and deep in moult--they could hear a faint muttering from the choleric infantry colonel.

Whenever Merlyn and his companion swam past them, they raised their spiky dorsal fins in menace, and only lowered them when they saw that Merlyn was a tench.

In the afternoons the programme was: Mondays and Fridays, tilting and horsemanship; Tuesdays, hawking; Wednesdays, fencing; Thursdays, archery; Saturdays, the theory of chivalry, with the proper measures to be blown on all occasions, terminology of the chase and hunting etiquette.

He ejected a quid of tobacco, nodded affably to Merlyn and pointed his trident at the Wart.

Then there was nothing but a loud rotating roaring and hissing noise which rose to such a tornado that he felt that he could not stand it any more.

At first, if either of them dropped his sword or got it stuck in the ground, the other put in two or three extra blows while he was patiently fumbling for it or trying to tug it out.

There were several boars' tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared.

Under this horizon of air you would have to imagine another horizon of under water, spherical and practically upside down--for the surface of the water acted partly as a mirror to what was below it.

There was a long pause, while the complicated stations of the two knights readjusted thelmselves, and then King Pellinore was at the opposite end from that at which he had started, while Sir Grummore faced him from his original position.

Sir Ector's nose was blue, and had an icicle hanging from the end of it, while all except Merlyn had a ledge of snow upon their shoulders.

It would be more fun than shooting at these hummocks."

The day after Sir Grummore's visit was sweltering for the men who toiled from milking to milking and then again till sunset in their battle with the sultry element.

He was a sort of head hound, and it was his business to take them out every day for walks, to pull thorns out of their feet, keep cankers out of their ears, bind the smaller bones that got dislocated, dose them for worms, isolate and nurse them in distemper, arbitrate in their quarrels and to sleep curled up among them at night.

His song was this: Therapeutic, Elephantic, Diagnosis, Boom!

The Wart ran about it like a rabbit in its own complicated labyrinth.

The good armourers--the best lived at Warrington, and still live near there--were careful to make all the forward or entering sides of their suits convex, so that the spear point glanced off them.

Both continued with undiminished speed.

Then he saw a small translucent shape hanging motionless near the surface.

Their mother is Athene, the goddess of wisdom, and, although they are often ready to play the buffoon to amuse you, such conduct is the prerogative of the truly wise.

"This is an anachronism," he said severely.

Curiously enough, the shields of Gothic suits were more inclined to be concave.

The pots were labelled Cardamum, Ginger, Barley Sugar, Wrangle, For a Snurt, For the Craye, Vertigo, etc.

Sir Grummore Grummursum, who was staying the night because he had been benighted out questin' after a specially long run, said that when he was their age he was swished every mornin' because he would go hawkin' instead of learnin'.

"Swindler," shouted Sir Grummore.

Hear it not, Merlin, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell."

Kay put on one of the left-hand gauntlets and called Cully from the perch--but Cully, with all his feathers close-set and malevolent, glared at him with a mad marigold eye and refused to come.

It was the highest room in the castle, directly below the look-out of the great keep, and from its window you could gaze across the open field--with its rights of warren--across the park, and the chase, until your eye finally wandered out over the distant blue tree-tops of the Forest Sauvage.

He was a sinewy fellow whose body did not carry fat.

Wart looked quickly at Merlyn, ducked his head between his legs and had a look through there, rattled his feathers into place, and began to scratch bis chin with the sharp talon of one toe.

On a neat row of nails there were Indian bells and swivels and silver varvels, each with Ector cut on.

He was a sort of head hound, and it was his business to take them out every day for walks, to pull thorns out of their feet, keep cankers out of their ears, bind the smaller bones that got dislocated, dose them for worms, isolate and nurse them in distemper, arbitrate in their quarrels and to sleep curled up among them at night.

At once there was an enormous mulberry growing in the middle of the courtyard, with its luscious blue fruits ready to patter down.

The other half of the cottage was divided into two rooms by a horizontal floor which made the top half into a bedroom and study, while the bottom half served for a larder, storeroom, stable and barn.

The Wart looked in the direction which had been indicated with a despondent thumb, and saw a lot of rope wound round a tree.

A bumblebee came zooming between them, under the grandstand and out into the sunlight.

They all loved him very much, and revered him for taking thorns out of their toes, and came to him with their troubles at once.

Why, I believe Sir Ector would have been gladder to get a by-our-lady tilting blue for your tutor, that swings himself along on his knuckles like an anthropoid ape, rather than a magician of known probity and international reputation with first-class honours from every European university.

He was cleanshaven, sunburned, nervous, gnarled like the roots of the trees; but gnarled and mature with weather and poetry rather than with age, for he was scarcely thirty years old.

As soon as you had crossed the drawbridge you were at the top of the village street--it had only one street--and this extended for about half a mile, with thatched houses of wattle and daub on either side of it.

How aggravating Cully looks, standing there on one leg as if there was nothing the matter."

The governess was always getting muddled with her astrolabe, and when she got specially muddled she would take it out of the Wart by rapping his knuckles.

Instead of his ordinary helmet with a visor he was wearing the proper tilting-helm, which looked like a large coal-scuttle, and as he cantered he clanged.

"Oh, flout the boy!" cried the magician passionately.

I find it most convenient"--and handed it to the Wart, who held it out rather gingerly toward Archimedes.

When men themselves became wicked they took refuge there, outlaws cunning and bloody as the gore-crow, and as persecuted.

With a blood-curdling beat of iron hoofs the mighty equestrians came together.

So they went out across the hay-field, noting how the carefully raked hay was now sodden again and losing its goodness, into the chase where the trees began to grow, far apart as yet and parklike, but gradually crowding into the forest shade.

There was a change in tempo, and Sir Grummore's horse could be definitely seen
to be cantering.

It's enough to baffle the college of sturgeons."

There he hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downward in a kind of melancholy, his lean cleanshaven chops giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam. He was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless--but his great jewel of an eye was that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of griefs.

The girths stood the test and he was in the saddle somehow, with his jousting lance between his legs, and then he was galloping round and round the tree, in the opposite direction to the one in which the brachet had wound herself up.

There were two little merlins which had only just been taking up from hacking, an old peregrine who was not much use in this wooded country but who was kept for appearances, a kestrel on which the boys had learned the rudiments of falconry, a spar-hawk which Sir Ector was kind enough to keep for the parish priest, and, caged off in a special apartment of his own at the far end, there was the tiercel goshawk Cully.

Then, just as Sir Grummore was relaxing with the fruits of victory, he swung round upon him, shouted "Non!" at the top of his voice, and gave him a good push in the middle of the chest.

Pancreatic, Microstatic, Anti-toxic, Doom!

The darkness became watered with light, with silver radiance, and then it was an eerie sight which dawned upon his vision.

At the other end of the barbican there was another portcullis, so that they could be trapped between the two and annihilated from above, while the bartizans, or hanging turrets, had holes in their floors through which the defenders could drop things on their heads.

But at the last moment he thought better or worse of it and subsided without the rattle.

They were called clumsy, Trowneer, Phoebe, Colle, Gerland, Talbot, Luath, Luffra, Apollon, Orthros, Bran, Gelert, Bounce, Boy, Lion, Bungey, Toby, and Diamond.

There were several boars' tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared.

They were unusual spectacles, being without ear pieces, but shaped rather like scissors or like the antennae of the tarantula wasp.

"That's better," said the tench, now out of sight in the murky olive water, and the Wart backed himself out of his tangle with infinite trouble, by wriggling his arm fins.

The spar-hawk's voice broke at the enormity of his confession.

They look on thelmselves as being dedicated to their profession, like an order of knighthood or something of that sort.

Here the poor roach began fizzing so much, what with its stammer and its tearful disposition, that it became quite inarticulate and could only stare at Merlyn with mournful eyes.

While this incantation was going on, the patient felt some queer sensations.

The rain had given place to a full August moonlight, so clear that you could see a woolly bear caterpillar fifteen yards away out of doors, as it climbed up and up the knobbly sandstone of the great keep, and it took the Wart only a few moments for his eyes to become accustomed to the diffused brightness inside the mews.

When he felt the trappings being taken off him, so that he was in hunting order, Cully did make some movements as if to rouse.

He ejected a quid of tobacco, nodded affably to Merlyn and pointed his trident at the Wart.

As the junior subaltern your only business is to keep your mouth shut, speak when you are spoken to, and not interrupt."

"Now hop on my hand--ah, be careful and don't gripe--and listen to what I have to tell you.

"Oh," he cried, "but I should have liked to be born with a proper father and mother, so that I could be a knight errant."

On the word One they all lay still; at Two they faced about; at Three they all shot together into a cone, whose apex was a bit of something to eat.

His
beak was right against the lobe of the ear, which its bristles made to tickle, and suddenly a soft hoarse voice whispered, "How d'you do," so that it sounded right inside his head.

Before the clink there were just the beeches, but immediately afterward there was a knight in full armour, standing still and silent and unearthly, among the majestic trunks.

The Castle of the Forest Sauvage is still standing, and you can see its lovely ruined walls with ivy on them, standing broached to the sun and wind.

There were several boars' tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared.

He was brought up short by the rope which was wound round the tree--the vacuous brachet meanwhile giving a melancholy yelp--and fell off his horse with a tremendous clang.

They say about how they were taken, about what they can remember of their homes: about their lineage and the great deeds of their ancestors, about their training and what they have learned and will learn.

"You see, one gets confused with Time, when it is like that.

The day after Sir Grummore's visit was sweltering for the men who toiled from milking to milking and then again till sunset in their battle with the sultry element.

Then it uncurled its handles and one handle lifted its lid with exaggerated courtesy while the other helped him to a generous spoonful.

The great forests of weed were delicately traced, and in them there hung motionless many schools of sticklebacks learning to do their physical exercises in strict unison.

This made Merlyn so furious that he gave Sir Ector rheumatism two nights running before he relented.

The outlaws drifted in for the meal like a conjuring trick.

Its beech-like trunk was embellished with a beard of twigs at the bottom, and where each of the great branches had sprung from the trunk the bark had split and was now discoloured with rain water or sap.

He was mounted on an enormous white horse that stood as rapt as its master, and he carried in his right hand, with its butt resting on the stirrup, a high, smooth jousting lance, which stood up among the tree stumps, higher and higher, till it was outlined against the velvet sky.

There were also melons, strawberries and cream, rusks, brown trout piping hot, grilled perch which were much nicer, chicken devilled enough to burn one's mouth out, kidneys and mushrooms on toast, fricassee, curry, and a choice of boiling coffee or best chocolate made with cream in large cups.

She said, "We will proceed with the catechism, prior to swearing him in."

"Insanitary habit," he added, beginning to look dejected, "and quite pointless.

We met a cowering coney And struck him through the vitals.

Here the poor roach began fizzing so much, what with its stammer and its tearful disposition, that it became quite inarticulate and could only stare at Merlyn with mournful eyes.

"Come on, then," cried the Wart, and they scampered off toward the Mews, turning a few cartwheels on the way.

There he hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downward in a kind of melancholy, his lean cleanshaven chops giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam. He was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless--but his great jewel of an eye was that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of griefs.

If you managed to put your
point through the ring, the thread broke, and you could canter off proudly with the ring round your spear.

There were several boars' tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared.

What makes it a great deal more difficult to imagine is that everything which human beings would consider to be above the water level was fringed with all the colours of the spectrum.

There was nothing cruel about him, no ignoble passion.

All this happened in about the time that it would take a sixpenny rocket to start off with its fiery swish, bend down from its climax and disperse itself in thunder and coloured stars.

At this there was a simultaneous tintinnabulation of all the bells, as each graven image lowered its raised foot in distress.

The white creature floated above like a Zeppelin, all indistinct except what was under the water.

Since the other boy always did bring it up when a question of precedence arose, he had got into the habit of giving in at once before it could be mentioned.

It had a courtyard and a moat with pike in it.

"Well," said the peregrine at last, "the initiation will have to be put off till tomorrow."

It has changed hands by secession often, by siege once, by treachery twice, but never by assault.

The dogs moved about with their tongues hanging out, or lay panting in bits of shade, while the farm horses sweated
through their coats and flicked their tails and tried to kick the horse-flies off their bellies with their great hind hoofs.

"A feather bed of one's very own, with sheets and a pillow--perhaps even two pillows, or a pillow and a bolster--and no need to get up in time for breakfast!

For the ghost lifted up its visor, revealing two enormous eyes frosted like ice; exclaimed in an anxious voice, "What, what?"; took off its eyes--which turned out to be hornrimmed spectacles, fogged by being inside the helmet; tried to wipe them on the horse's mane--which only made them worse; lifted both hands above its head and tried to wipe them on its plume; dropped its lance; dropped the spectacles; got off the horse to search for them--the visor shutting in the process; lifted its visor.

When he did see the old despot he started back in horror, for Mr. P. was four feet long, his weight incalculable.

The Wart ran about it like a rabbit in its own complicated labyrinth.

The funnel of whistling noise and space received them.

"It is all right," said the Wart again, disgusted by the fuss, but fate was bent on punishing him, and the old lady was inexorable.

This was splendid cover, but it betrayed his whereabouts by rustling.

At this the pot beamed all over its face and began to strut a bit, but Merlyn rapped it on the head with a teaspoon, so that it sat down and shut up at once.

It is a depressing thought, but of course they are mainly trained by hunger.

There were no pheasant-shooting proprietors then, to see that the undergrowth was thinned, and not one thousandth part of the number of the present-day timber merchants who prune judiciously at the few remaining woods.

It looked at them with big, apprehensive eyes and evidently wanted something, but could not make up its mind.

Then there were stuffed birds, popinjays, and maggot-pies and kingfishers, and peacocks with all their feathers but two, and tiny birds like beetles, and a reputed phoenix which smelt of incense and cinnamon.

If you are a sensible person, you will spend days there, possibly weeks, working out for yourself by detection which were the stables, which the mews, where were the cow byres, the armoury, the lofts, the well, the smithy, the kennel, the soldiers' quarters, the priest's room, and my lord's and lady's chambers.

Unfortunately they were now so cross that they had both ceased to be vigilant, and in the fury of the moment they missed each other altogether.

Most ghostly he looked, too, as he hoved meditating on the confines of the gloom.

He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned it.

Let thee sleep in 'em, come summer, come winter, and hunt in 'em for thy commons lest thee starve; and smell to 'em as they brings forward their comely bright leaves, according to order, or loses of 'em by the same order back'ards: let thee stand in 'em that thou be'st not seen, and move in "em that thou be'st not heard, and warm thee with 'em as thou fall'st on sleep--ah, they'm proper fine pleaces, the 'oods, for a free man of hands and heart."

Hob's line pointed down what seemed to be a succession of glades, shady and murmuring places in which the wild thyme was droning with bees.

The momentum of their armour was too great for them to stop till they had passed each other handsomely, and then they manoeuvred about in such a manner that neither happened to come within the other's range of vision.

The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch--by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thoughts too strong for individual brains.

"Not like that," said the tench in ponderous tones.

His arms had become two more fins--of a delicate pink--and he had sprouted some more somewhere about his stomach.

Wart sat down again on the floor, and Archimedes resumed his toilet, pulling his pinions and tail feathers through his beak to smooth the barbs together.

She was too tangled up to move.

"I think the way was behind that big spruce with the spike top.

Cully looked down at his masters, opened his beak in an angry pant of failure, and remained motionless.

He raised his crest, his shoulder coverts and the soft feathers of his thighs.

Then they slipped their heads into the laundered shirts, and ran out to the refreshed and sparkling court.

Naughty, naughty!

Here he held out his hand to the owl, who came waddling like a goose along the corkindrill's back--he waddled with this rolling gait so as to keep his tail from being damaged--and hopped down to Merlyn's finger with every sign of reluctance.

"Oh," thought he, "now I am truly lost, and now there is almost no alternative except to have my nose bitten off, or to be pierced right through with one of those waspy arrows, or to be eaten by a hissing dragon or a wolf or a wild boar or a magician--if magicians do eat boys, which I expect they do.

In the armoury of The Castle of the Forest Sauvage there was a big picture of a knight in armour with circles round his vulnerable points.

"Oh, how nice of him," exclaimed the King again, beginning to bustle about with his various trappings.

Now he suddenly remembered that this was what Merlyn was for, and he thought with dread of Summulae Logicales and the filthy astrolabe.

The dozen feathers of his tail, with the double deck-feathers in the middle, grew out in the twinkling of an eye, and all the covert feathers of his back and breast and shoulders slipped out of the skin to hide the roots of the more important plumes.

The thunder-clouds which usually go with hot weather were there, high columns of cumulus with glaring edges, but there was not going to be any thunder.

On the word One they all lay still; at Two they faced about; at Three they all shot together into a cone, whose apex was a bit of something to eat.

When it is on it's either frying or freezing, and it gets rusty.

"Only it is inclined to give itself airs."

"Feign I," said Sir Grummore.

She was too tangled up to move.

Just outside Sir Ector's castle there was a jousting field for tournaments, although there had been no tournaments in it since Kay was born.

He has got some badgers and hedgehogs and mice and ants and things on this white donkey here, because we could not leave them behind to starve.

They had six arrows each and would be able to fire and mark them ail before they needed to frighten the rabbits back by walking about to collect.

"If you will excuse me, Madam," said Balan, "perhaps we could manage the ordeal tonight?

Wart gave two terrific kicks and vanished altogether in a clump of mare's tail several yards away.

In the afternoons the programme was: Mondays and Fridays, tilting and horsemanship; Tuesdays, hawking; Wednesdays, fencing; Thursdays, archery; Saturdays, the theory of chivalry, with the proper measures to be blown on all occasions, terminology of

These little noises of footsteps and soft-fringed wing-beats and stealthy bellies drawn over the grass blades or rattling against the bracken at first frightened or interested him, so that he moved to see what they were (but never saw), then soothed him, so that he no longer cared to see what they were but trusted them to be themselves, and finally left him altogether as he swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling into the scented turf, into the warm ground.

He is a fool and it is a rotten hawk.

The Wart was familiar with the nests of Spar-hark and Gos, the crazy conglomerations of sticks and oddments which had been taken over from squirrels or crows, and he knew how the twigs and the tree foot were splashed with white mutes, old bones, muddy feathers and castings.

It was opposite to the solar, and faced south.

Merlyn took off his pointed hat when he came into this chamber, because it was too high for the roof, and immediately there was a scamper in one of the dark corners and a flap of soft wings, and a tawny owl was sitting on the black skull-cap which protected the top of his head.

Then the great wings of the aerial assassin began to row the air, but reluctant and undecided.

Whenever Merlyn and his companion swam past them, they raised their spiky dorsal fins in menace, and only lowered them when they saw that Merlyn was a tench.

If they had forgotten to brush their hair he confined them to barracks.

"Yoicks, what!" cried King Pellinore, waving his lance in the air, and swaying excitedly in the saddle.

There were several boars' tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared.

My insight tells me that Hob has this minute finished for the night.

The Mews was neatly kept, with sawdust on the floor to absorb the mutes, and the castings taken up every day.

The best place of all for hitting people was on the very crest of the tilting helm, that is, if the person in question were vain enough to have a large metal crest in whose folds and ornaments the point would find a ready lodging.

He was mounted on an enormous white horse that stood as rapt as its master, and he carried in his right hand, with its butt resting on the stirrup, a high, smooth jousting lance, which stood up among the tree stumps, higher and higher, till it was outlined against the velvet sky.

On the bench there was a jumble of oddments such as are to be found in every workshop, bits of cord, wire, metal, tools, some bread and cheese which the mice had been at, a leather bottle, some frayed gauntlets for the left hand, nails, bits of sacking, a couple of lures and some rough tallies scratched on the wood.

They wore their best clothes and trooped up the street with their most respectable gait on Sundays, looking with vague and dignified looks in all directions, as if reluctant to disclose their destination, and on week-days they came to Mass and vespers in their ordinary clothes, walking much more cheerfully.

For the hay was an element to them, like sea or air, in which they bathed and plunged themselves and which they even breathed in.

"I will keep the foul thing for Balan," thought the Wart, resuming his search for his tutor.

Up and up it went, not weaving as it would have done with a snatching loose, but soaring, swimming, aspiring to heaven, steady, golden and superb.

Sir Ector said, "Had a good quest today?"

The street divided the clearing into two huge fields, that on the left being cultivated in hundreds of long narrow strips, while that on the right ran down to a river and was used as pasture.

Just as they were going to swim off on their tour of inspection, a timid young roach appeared from between two waving bottle bushes of mare's tail and hung about, looking pale with agitation.

There was a grassy bank there, swelling gently to a gigantic sycamore, upward of ninety feet high, which stood upon its top.

It was a baby pike, absolutely rigid and probably asleep, and it looked like a pipe stem or a sea-horse stretched out flat.

The pots were labelled Cardamum, Ginger, Barley Sugar, Wrangle, For a Snurt, For the Craye, Vertigo, etc.

"Do not vex yourself, for no harm will come to either of us."

Once they were standing within a few feet of each other, back to back, only to stalk off in opposite directions with infinite precaution, and once King Pellinore did hit Sir Grummore with one of his back strokes, but they both immediately spun round so often that they became giddy and mislaid each other afresh.

This seemed to be the wrong question, for Pellinore began to look even more depressed.

Without further words, the two gentlemen retreated to the opposite ends of the clearing, fewtered Iheir spears, and prepared to hurtle together in the preliminary charge.

"You know you will turn me into a hawk when you want to," shouted the Wart, "but you like to plague me because it is wet.

He was trying too hard and plucking on his loose, instead of leaving it to the bow.

The two hearts stood still.
2
A good while later, when they had been whistling and luring and following the disturbed and sulky hawk from tree to tree, Kay lost his temper.

Wart draggled off to the tower room, where Merlyn was busy knitting himself a woollen night-cap for the winter.

"Confound the boy," said Sir Ector.

You will find that both the kestrel and the spar-hawk will be polite to you, but for all sake's sake don't interrupt the senior merlins or the falcon.

Wart would not have been frightened of an English forest nowadays, but the great jungle of Old England was a different matter.

He clutched his jousting lance in his right hand, and galloped off in the direction of the noise.

It came up easily because it had been loaded systematically--not like modern hay--and Sir Ector scrambled about on top, getting in the way of his assistants, who did the real work, and stamping and perspiring and scratching about with his fork and trying to make the rick grow straight and shouting that it would all fall down as soon as the west winds came.

Put your hands to your sides and relax your muscles.

When men themselves became wicked they took refuge there, outlaws cunning and bloody as the gore-crow, and as persecuted.

Ah, tempt not the foul fiend to his damnation."

The street divided the clearing into two huge fields, that on the left being cultivated in hundreds of long narrow strips, while that on the right ran down to a river and was used as pasture.

I think you ought to go away really almost at once, in case my disillusioned mouth should suddenly determine to introduce you to my great gills, which have teeth in them also.

For instance, if you had happened to be fishing for the Wart, he would have seen you, at the rim of the tea saucer which was the upper air to him, not as one person waving a fishing--rod, but as seven people, whose outlines were red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, all waving the same rod whose colours were as varied.

Kay put on one of the left-hand gauntlets and called Cully from the perch--but Cully, with all his feathers close-set and malevolent, glared at him with a mad marigold eye and refused to come.

A nice bed with a nice pillow and a nice sheet
that you could lie in, and then I would put this beastly horse in a meadow and tell that beastly brachet to run away and play, and throw all this beastly armour out of the window, and let the beastly Beast go and chase himself--that I would."

A web of skin grew from his wrists to his shoulders, while his primary feathers burst out in soft blue quills from the ends of his fingers and quickly grew.

Water snails slowly ambled about on the stems of the lilies or under their leaves, while fresh-water mussels lay on the bottom doing nothing in particular.

There were two straw targets fifty yards apart, and when they had shot their arrows at one, they had only to go to it, collect them, and shoot back at the other, after facing about.

He snatched his hand away, thinking he had been stung by something, before he noticed it was an arrow.

The horizon had closed to this.

The magician was staring at him with a kind of unwinking and benevolent curiosity which made him feel that it would not be at all rude to stare back, no ruder than it would be to stare at one of his guardian's cows who happened to be thinking about his personality as she leaned her head over a gate.

There was the size of the spear.

But before the padre had got to the end of it, he broke down altogether and sobbed out, "Oh, please your ladyship.

Now I may well wish that I had been good, and not angered the
governess when she got muddled with her astrolabe, and had loved my dear guardian Sir Ector as much as he deserved."

"Hail," said Merlyn, in his most mysterious manner.

They did not wear many clothes, and the shadows between their sliding muscles were blue on the nut-brown skins.

Sir Grummore Grummursum is on the way to challenge you to a joust."

Here he held out his hand to the owl, who came waddling like a goose along the corkindrill's back--he waddled with this rolling gait so as to keep his tail from being damaged--and hopped down to Merlyn's finger with every sign of reluctance.

"Ah, we call it the Beast Glatisant, you know," replied the monarch, assuming a learned air and beginning to speak quite volubly.

One man stood on top of the cart to receive the hay and direct operations, while one man walked on either side picking up what the boys had prepared and throwing it to him with a fork.

There was a clearing in the forest, a wide sward of moonlit grass, and the white rays shone full upon the tree trunks on the opposite side.

Eventually she offered to show it to Sir Ector, who was Kay's father, had hysterics and was sent away.

It peered at the boy with one hand up-- like a lost mariner searching for land--and exclaimed, "Ah-hah!

There was a well in front of the cottage, and the metallic noise which the Wart had heard was caused by a very old gentleman who was drawing water out of it by means of a handle and chain.

He lay down for half an hour, pressed under the fallen tree where he had hidden, to give time for the thing to go right away and for his own heart to cease thundering.

At these melancholy thoughts, and especially at the recollection of kind Sir Ector with his pitchfork and his red nose, the poor Wart's eyes became full of tears and he lay most desolate beneath the tree.