No More Learning

"

"I'm Gawain from Arthur's court," cried Gawain, lifting his vizor so
that they could see his face. "I've killed Pelleas whom you hate so.
Open the gates and I'll make you merry with my story. "

The ladies ran down crying out to Ettarre, "Pelleas is dead! Sir Gawain
of Arthur's court has killed him and is blowing the bugle to come in to
tell us. "

"Let him in," said Ettarre.

Then they opened the gates and Gawain rode inside.

For three days Pelleas wandered all about, doing nothing but thinking of
Gawain and Ettarre, and on the third night, when Gawain did not come, he
wondered why Gawain lingered with his golden news. At last he rode up to
Ettarre's castle, tied his horse outside and walked in through the wide
open gates. The court he found all dark and empty, not a light
glimmering from anywhere, so he passed out by the back gate, into the
large gardens beyond of red and white roses, where he saw three
pavilions. In one he found the three knights with their squires, all red
with revelling, and all asleep, in the second he saw the girls with
their scornful smiles frozen stiff in slumber, and in the third lay
Gawain with Ettarre, the golden crown he had won for her at the joust on
her forehead, both sleeping.

Pelleas drew back as if he had touched a snake.

"I'll kill them just as they lie," he cried in a passion. "O! to think
that any knight could be so false!
"

But he was too manly to kill anyone in sleep, so he just laid his sword
across their throats and passed out to his horse, crushed his saddle
with his thighs, clenched his hands together and groaned.

"I loathe her now just as much as I loved her! " he cried, and dashing
his spurs into his horse he bounded out into the darkness and never came
back.

Meanwhile Ettarre, feeling the cold sword on her neck, awoke.

"Liar! " she cried to Gawain, as she saw that it was the sword of
Pelleas, "you haven't killed Pelleas, for he's been here and could have
killed us both just now. "

And ever after that, as those who tell the story say, the proud and
scornful Ettarre sighed for Pelleas, the one true knight in the world,
her only faithful lover, and at last pined away because he never came
back.




THE LAST TOURNAMENT.


One day while King Arthur and Sir Lancelot were riding far, far beneath
a winding wall of rock they heard the wail of a child.

A half-dead oak tree climbed up the sides of the rock and up in mid-air
it held an eagle's nest. Through its branches rushed a rainy wind and
through the wind came the voice of a little child. Lancelot sprang up
the crag and from the nest at the tree-top he brought down a baby girl.
Round her neck was twined a necklace of rubies, wound round and round
three times.

Arthur took the baby and gave it to Queen Guinevere, who soon loved it
very tenderly and named her "Nestling. " But Nestling had caught a
terrible cold in her strange little home in the wild eagle's nest and
died. And after that whenever the Queen looked at the ruby necklace it
made her very sad so she gave it to Arthur and said:

"Take these jewels of our Dead Innocence and make them a prize at a
tournament.