Very often the good knight in the midst of forest or wild found a night's shelter in a friendly hermitage, for hermitages, indeed, were established partly to afford shelter to belated travellers. Here is an example. Sir Tor asks the dwarf who is his guide, "'Know ye any lodging?' 'I know none,' said the dwarf; 'but here beside is an hermitage, and there ye must take such lodging as ye find.' And within a while they came to the hermitage and took lodging, and there was grass and oats and bread for their horses. Soon it was spread, and full hard was their supper; but there they rested them all the night till on the morrow, and heard a mass devoutly, and took their leave of the hermit, and Sir Tor prayed the hermit to pray for him, and he said he would, and betook him to God; and so he mounted on horseback, and rode towards Camelot." But sometimes not even a friendly hermitage came in sight at the hour of twilight, when the forest glades darkened, and the horse track across the moor could no longer be seen, and the knight had to betake himself to a soldier's bivouac. It is an incident often met with in the Romances. Here is a more poetical description than usual:--"And anon these knights made them ready, and rode over holts and hills, through forests and woods, till they came to a fair meadow full of fair flowers and grass, and there they rested them and their horses all that night." Again, "Sir Launcelot rode into a forest, and there he met with a gentlewoman riding upon a white palfrey, and she asked him, 'Sir Knight, whither ride ye?' 'Certainly, damsel,' said Sir Launcelot, 'I wot not whither I ride, but as fortune leadeth me.'... Then Sir Launcelot asked her where he might be harboured that night. 'Ye shall none find this day nor night, but to-morrow ye shall find good harbour.' And then he commended her unto God. Then he rode till he came to a cross, and took that for his host as for that night. And he put his horse to pasture, and took off his helm and shield, and made his prayers to the cross, that he might never again fall into deadly sin, and so he laid him down to sleep, and anon as he slept it befel him that he had a vision," with which we will not trouble the reader; but we commend the incident to any young artist in want of a subject for a picture: the wayside cross where the four roads meet in the forest, the gnarled tree-trunks with their foliage touched with autumn tints, and the green bracken withering into brown and yellow and red, under the level rays of the sun which fling alternate bars of light and shade across the scene; and the noble war-horse peacefully grazing on the short sweet forest grass, and the peerless knight in glorious gilded arms, with his helmet at his feet, and his great spear leaned against a tree-trunk, kneeling before the cross, with his grave noble face, and his golden hair gleaming in the sun-light, "making his prayers that he might never again fall into deadly sin."