e, for
if I am a living man, he will find me there.'

Sir Lancelot put his horse into the water at Westminster, and he swam
straight over to Lambeth, and soon after he landed he found traces of
the fight. He rode along the track till he came to the wood, where the
archers were lying waiting for him, and when they saw him, they bade
him on peril of his life to go no further along that path.

'Why should I, who am a Knight of the Round Table, turn out of any
path that pleases me?' asked Sir Lancelot.

'Either you will leave this path or your horse will be slain,'
answered the archers.

'You may slay my horse if you will,' said Sir Lancelot, 'but when my
horse is slain I shall fight you on foot, and so would I do, if there
were five hundred more of you.' With that they smote the horse with
their arrows, but Sir Lancelot jumped off, and ran into the wood, and
they could not catch him. He went on some way, but the ground was
rough, and his armour was heavy, and sore he dreaded the treason of
Sir Meliagraunce. His heart was near to fail him, when there passed by
a cart with two carters that came to fetch wood. 'Tell me, carter,'
asked Sir Lancelot, 'what will you take to suffer me to go in your
cart till we are within two miles of the castle of Sir Meliagraunce?'

'I cannot take you at all,' answered the carter, 'for I am come to
fetch wood for my lord Sir Meliagraunce.'

'It is with him that I would speak.'

'You shall not go with me,' said the carter, but hardly had he uttered
the words when Sir Lancelot leapt up into the cart, and gave him such
a buffet that he fell dead on the ground. At this sight the other
carter cried that he would take the Knight where he would if he would
only spare his life. 'Then I charge you,' said Sir Lancelot, 'that you
bring me to the castle gate.' So the carter drove at a great gallop,
and Sir Lancelot's horse, who had espied his master, followed the
cart, though more than fifty arrows were standing in his body. In an
hour and a half they reached the castle gate, and were seen of
Guenevere and her ladies, who were standing in a window. 'Look,
Madam,' cried one of her ladies, 'in that cart yonder is a goodly
armed Knight. I suppose he is going to his hanging.'

'Where?' asked the Queen, and as she spoke she espied that it was Sir
Lancelot, and that his horse was following riderless. 'Well is he that
has a trusty friend,' said she, 'for a noble Knight is hard pressed
when he rides in a