What more should I tell you? He fared for so long, up and down, here and there, that his body grew so tanned and stained and blackened that scarce had any man known him that had seen him aforetime. His hair was long and tangled and hung in locks about his shoulders; his fair hair and face and forehead grew black as a flitch of bacon, and his neck that had been great and thick, was long and thin to the bone. All lean from hunger he was and hairy; his eyebrows had grown shaggy, his eyes sunken; his sides were all uncovered, and his skin so hung about his bones that you might count the ribs beneath; his legs were bared and brown and lean and shrunken; his veins showed and his sinews, and from toe to groin no shred of raiment had he, and black and brown and stained he was. Thereto had he waxed so weary and spent that scarce might he stand upright; he needs must have a stick to lean on as he walked, and much the cask, that he had carried night and day for a year, now weighed upon him. What more need I tell you? His body had been in so great torment the year through that marvel it was how he had brooked it; and so much had he borne and suffered that he knew right well he might not longer endure. Yet was there a thing he must do. He holdeth he must return again,--never will the hermit laugh when he seeth him, rather will he weep. So the knight set forth leaning upon his staff, and often he maketh lament in a loud voice, yet he strove so much that still he held on his way to the hermitage. At the end of the year on the same day he had departed from that most holy place, the high day of Good Friday, even in such guise as I have told you, he came thither again. Now hear ye what befell him.