that would be, glory in the midst of ladies, battle-joy
among knights, honour from all kings and princes and people--these
things.

But my mother wept softly above me, till I arose with a great shudder of
delight and drew the edges of the hawberk over my cheek, I liked so to
feel the rings slipping, slipping, till they fell off altogether; then I
said:

'O Lord God that made the world, if I might only die in this armour!'

Then my mother helped me to put it on, and I felt strange and new in it,
and yet I had neither lance nor horse.

So when we reached the cottage again she said: 'See now, Lionel, you must
take this knight's horse and his lance, and ride away, or else the people
will come here to kill another king; and when you are gone, you will
never see me any more in life.'

I wept thereat, but she said: 'Nay, but see here.'

And taking the dead knight's lance from among the garden lilies, she rent
from it the pennon (which had a sword on a red ground for bearing), and
cast it carelessly on the ground, then she bound about it a pennon with
my bearing, gold wings on a blue ground; she bid me bear the Knight's
body, all armed as he was, to put on him his helm and lay him on the
floor at her bed's foot, also to break his sword and cast it on our
hearth-stone; all which things I did.

Afterwards she put the surcoat on me, and then lying down in her gorgeous
raiment on her bed, she spread her arms out in the form of a cross, shut
her eyes, and said:

'Kiss me, Lionel, for I am tired.'

And after I had kissed her she died.

And I mounted my dead foe's horse and rode away; neither did I ever know
what wrong that was which he had done me, not while I was in the body at
least.

And do not blame me for not burying my mother; I left her there because,
though she did not say so to me, yet I knew the thoughts of her heart,
and that the thing she had wished so earnestly for these years, and
years, and years, had been but to lie dead with him lying dead close to
her.

So I rode all that night for I could not stop, because of the thoughts
that were in me, and, stopping at this place and that, in three days came
to the city.

And there the King held his court with great pomp.

And so I went to the palace, and asked to see the King; whereupon they
brought me into the great hall where he was with all his knights, and my
heart swelled within me to think that I too was a King.

So I prayed him to make me a knight, an