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KING A&TffUR. 149
** And where is Sir Lancelot now, and who is this
little maid, and how came you bj Tonnerre ! - asked Sir
Galahad, unable longer to restrain the questions he had
been longing to ask.
But before the lad j could reply,
Sir Percivale spoke:
" Here comes our lord the king: had not the Lady
Isolde better tell her story to him rather than to ml"
44 To him and to yon together ; for though the ting
is chief of his knights, Sir
are chief among knights," said
Galahad and Sir Percivale
the lady, bowing courteously.
And now Txing Arthur himself rode up, and Bhoda,
looking at him with great wondering eyes, be-
held a tall and stately man, dressed in armor i .
richly inlaid with gold, with a crown wrought ^tf
around his helmet, and wearing for crest the
dragon of his father Uther, surnamed Pendragon.
At his side glittered the jeweled hilt
of the sword Excalibnr, given him by the
mysterious Lady of the Lake, the foster-mother
of Sir Lancelot ; upon one side of the blade was
engraven in the oldest of old languages the
command, "Take me!" and upon the other
appeared in the language of whoever looked I
at it, the words, " Cast me away ^ Xot even I
Merlin, the wise man of Arthur's court, could explain
A
the meaning of these contradictory phrases,
but all
agreed in saying that Excalibnr was gifted with magic