nd afterwards by the
King. Sir Kay here shows his usual cross-grainedness; and Guinevere
"with milde mood" requests to know "What the devil is thee within?" The
adventure is of a class well known in romance. You ride to a certain
fountain, pour water from it on a stone, and then, after divers marvels,
have to do battle with a redoubtable knight. Colgrevance has fared
badly; Kay is as usual quite sure that he would fare better; but Ywain
actually undertakes the task. He has a tough battle with the knight who
answers the challenge, but wounds him mortally; and when the knight
flies to his neighbouring castle, is so hard on his heels that the
portcullis actually drops on his horse's haunches just behind the
saddle, and cuts the beast in two. Ywain is thus left between the
portcullis and the (by this time shut) door--a position all the more
awkward that the knight himself expires immediately after he has reached
shelter. The situation is saved, however, by the guardian damsel of
romance, Lunet (the Linet or Lynette of the Beaumains-Gareth story), who
emerges from a postern between gate and portcullis and conveys the
intruder safe to her own chamber. Here a magic bed makes him invisible:
though the whole castle, including the very room, is ransacked by the
dead knight's people and would-be revengers, at the bidding of his
widow.

This widow, however, is rather an Ephesian matron. The sagacious Lunet,
whose confidante she is, suggests to her that, unless she enlists some
doughty knight as her champion, the king will confiscate her fief; and
that there is no champion like a husband. A very little more finesse
effects the marriage, even though the lady is made aware of the identity
of her new lover and her own husband's slayer. (It is of course
necessary to remember that the death of a combatant in fairly challenged
and fought single contest was not reckoned as any fault to his
antagonist.) Ywain actually shows his prowess against the King: and has
an opportunity of showing Kay once more that it is one thing to blame
other people for failing, and another to succeed yourself. And after
this the newly married pair live together happily for a time. But it was
reckoned a fault in a knight to take too prolonged a honeymoon: and
Ywain, after what the French call _adieux dechirants_, obtains leave for
the usual "twelvemonth and a day," at the expiration of which, on St.
John's Eve, he is without fail to return, the engagement being se