At the end of seven years, he escaped by something like a miracle, and after visiting Jerusalem, rode off to Josyan, whom he found still faithful to him at heart, though formally the bride of an outrageous heathen, the King of Mounbraunt. To his castle Bevis proceeded, not without blood-curdling adventures on the way, and introduced himself as a poor palmer, welcomed for the sake of her Christian lover by Josyan, though she did not recognise him so soon as did his good horse Arundel, that in its vehement excitement at his voice outdoes the fidelity of Argus; then his springing on its back without touching a stirrup reveals him like the bending of Ulysses’ bow. Having got the king out of the way by means of a somewhat unchivalrous fib, Bevis and Josyan eloped together, meeting encounters which showed how little his long imprisonment had unsteeled the paladin’s sinews. His first feat was to kill a brace of lions at one blow; and next he fell in with a giant named Ascapard who, wounded all over his thirty feet of length, was glad to save his life by becoming Bevis’ page. It was now high time for our hero to be turning homewards. Several years back, before his imprisonment, he had casually fallen in with one of his cousins, sent to search him out and bring him to the immediate assistance of his uncle Saber, who had fled to the Isle of Wight for refuge from the tyrant Murdour. As the first stage of his journey, Bevis proceeded by sea to Cologne, where the bishop happened to be another uncle of his, so he took the opportunity to have Josyan and Ascapard christened, the latter behaving most irreverently under the rite, so as to play the part of a mediæval gargoyle in the edifying story. The bishop, for his part, used the opportunity of having such a champion at hand to destroy a fiery dragon that infested the country; and in return for this service of some little difficulty, equipped Sir Bevis with a hundred knights, at the head of whom he landed in Hampshire, leaving Josyan at Cologne with Ascapard in attendance.