apel Perilous, and may ye speed well.'

Right so, Sir Lancelot departed, and the sun was near its setting.

For some hours Sir Lancelot fared across the marsh, until it was deep
night, save for the stars; then he came upon a broad road, grass-grown
and banked high, where the night wind piped in the long grass. This he
knew was a road which the great Roman necromancers had wrought, and he
thought he had missed his way, for there was no other path.

As he stood marvelling, the figure of a man, tall and gaunt and but
half clad, came down the broad road towards him, and cried in a hollow
voice:

'For the love of charity, sir knight, give to a poor man who is
outcast.'

Sir Lancelot pitied the sunken eyes of the poor man, and gave him alms.

'God give thee comfort, poor soul,' said the knight, 'and get thee a
roof, for the night wind blows chill.'

'God bless thee, sir knight,' said the man, in awful tones, 'for
courtesy and pity such as thine are rare. Whither goest thou this
night?'

'I seek the Chapel Perilous,' said Sir Lancelot.

At which the shape threw back its head and cried out as if with great
sorrow.

'God fend thee, sir knight,' he said, 'and bring thee safe alive. What
thou gettest there, keep thou in thy hands until the dawn, or thy soul
shall suffer death.'

Then he vanished, and Sir Lancelot knew it had been a phantom.

Then as he crossed himself, he looked up, and through some thin and
withered trees a little way off upon a slope he saw the shimmer of
light, as if a chapel was lit up. He went towards it, and he saw a high
wall that was broken down in many places, and an old grey chapel
beyond, and the windows were shimmering with a ghostly light. As he
came through the trees he saw they were all dead, with neither leaf nor
twig upon them, their roots were crooked out of the ground as if they
would throw his horse, and their limbs were stretched as if they
strained to clutch him.

Coming to the gate in the wall, his horse trembled and plunged, and
would go no further; whereat Sir Lancelot alighted, and tied it to a
thorn-tree, and went through the gate. By the ghostly light that came
from the windows of the ruined chapel he saw that under the eaves were
hung fair shields, with rich devices, and all were turned upside down.
Many of them were those of knights he had known or heard of, long since
dead or lost. When he had made a few steps on the grass-grown pathway
towards the door, of a sudden