soon round at the castle gate
again, and entered, and went into the hall, where was the old dame,
busied about some household matter. Ralph nodded to her and hastened
away, lest she should fall to talk with him; and he set himself now to
go from chamber to chamber, that he might learn the castle, what it
was. He came into the guard-chamber and found the walls thereof all
hung with armour and weapons, clean and in good order, though there was
never a man-at-arms there, nor any soul except the old woman. He went
up a stair therefrom on to the battlements, and went into the towers of
the wall, and found weapons both for hand, and for cast and shot in
each one of them, and all ready as if for present battle; then he came
down into the court again and went into a very goodly ambulatory over
against the hall, and he entered a door therefrom, which was but on the
latch, and went up a little stair into a chamber, which was the
goodliest and the richest of all. Its roof was all done with gold and
blue from over sea, and its pavement wrought delicately in Alexandrine
work. On the dais was a throne of carven ivory, and above it a canopy
of baudekin of the goodliest fashion, and there was a foot-carpet
before it, wrought with beasts and the hunting of the deer. As for the
walls of that chamber, they were hung with a marvellous halling of
arras, wherein was wrought the greenwood, and there amidst in one place
a pot-herb garden, and a green garth with goats therein, and in that
garth a little thatched house. And amidst all this greenery were
figured over and over again two women, whereof one old and the other
young; and the old one was clad in grand attire, with gold chains and
brooches and rings, and sat with her hands before her by the house
door, or stood looking on as the young one worked, spinning or digging
in the garth, or milking the goats outside of it, or what not; and this
one was clad in sorry and scanty raiment.

What all this might mean Ralph knew not; but when he had looked long at
the greenery and its images, he said to himself that if he who wrought
that cloth had not done the young woman after the likeness of the Lady
whom he had helped in the wildwood, then it must have been done from
her twin sister.

Long he abode in that chamber looking at the arras, and wondering
whether the sitter in the ivory throne would be any other than the
thrall in the greenwood cot. He abode there so long that the dusk
began t