As poor, puzzled Leodogran knew nothing about the matter himself, he sent for his gray-headed trusty old chamberlain, who always had good counsel to give him in any dilemma; and he asked the chamberlain whether he had heard anything certainly as to Arthur's birth. The chamberlain told him that there were just two men in all the world who knew the truth with respect to Arthur and where he had come from, and that both these men were twice as old as himself. One of them was Merlin the wizard, the other was Bleys, Merlin's teacher in magic, who had written a book of his renowned pupil's wonders, which probably related everything regarding the secret of Arthur's birth. "If King Arthur had done no more for me in my wars than you have just now in my present trouble," the king answered the chamberlain, "I would have died long ago from the wild beasts and the heathen. Send me in Ulfius and Brastias and Bedivere again." So the chamberlain went out and Arthur's three men came into Leodogran who spoke to them this way: "I have often seen a big cuckoo chased by little birds and understood why such tiny birds plagued him so, but why are the nobles in your country rebelling against their king and saying that he is not the son of a king. Tell me whether you yourselves think he is the child of King Uther." [Illustration: SIR KING, THERE ARE ALL SORTS OF STORIES ABOUT THAT.] Ulfius and Brastias answered immediately "yes," but Bedivere, the first of all Arthur's knights, became very bold when anyone slandered his sovereign and he replied: "_Sir King, there are all sorts of stories about that_; some of the nobles hate him just because he is good and they are wicked; they cry out that he is no man because his ways are gentler than their rough manners, while others again think he must be an angel dropped from heaven. But I will tell you the facts as I know them, King Uther and Gerlois were rivals long ago; they both loved Ygerne. And she was the wife of Gerlois and had no sons, but three daughters, one of them the Queen of Orkney who has clung to Arthur like a sister. The two rivals, Gerlois and Uther went to war with each other and Gerlois was killed in battle; then Uther quickly married the winsome Ygerne, the widow of Gerlois, for he loved her dearly and impatiently. In a few months Uther died, and on that very night of his death Arthur was born. And as soon as he was born they carried him out by a secret back gateway to Merlin the magician, to be brought up far away from the court so that no one would hear about him until he was grown up ready to sit upon Uther's, his father, throne.