"God be praised thereof, for so good knight as are you may well go see the rich King Fisherman. Now am I fain to pray you of the valour that is in you and the courtesy, that you return with me and convoy me beyond a certain castle that is in this forest whereof is some small peril." "Damsel," saith Messire Gawain, "Willingly, at your pleasure." He returneth with the damsel through the midst of the forest that was tall and leafy and little haunted of folk. The damsel relateth to him the adventure of the heads that she carried and that were in the car, like as she did at the court of King Arthur, and of the shield and the brachet she had left there, but much it misliked Messire Gawain of the damsel that was afoot behind them. "Damsel," saith Messire Gawain, "Wherefore doth not this damsel that goeth afoot mount upon the car?" "Sir," saith she, "This shall she not, for behoveth her go not otherwise than afoot. But and you be so good knight as men say, betimes will she have done her penance." "How so?" saith Gawain. "I will tell you," saith she. "And it shall so be that God bring you to the hostel of rich King Fisherman, and the most Holy Graal appear before you and you demand unto whom is served thereof, then will she have done her penance, and I, that am bald, shall receive again my hair. And so you also make not demand thereof, then will it behove us suffer sore annoy until such time as the Good knight shall come and shall have achieved the Graal. For on account of him that first was there and made not the demand, are all the lands in sorrow and warfare, and the good King Fisherman is yet in languishment." "Damsel," saith Messire Gawain, "God grant me courage and will herein that I may come to do this thing according to your wish, whereof may I win worship both of God and of the world." III. Messire Gawain and the damsels go on their way a great pace through the high forest, green and leafy, where the birds are singing, and enter into the most hideous forest and most horrible that any might ever see, and seemed it that no greenery never there had been, so bare and dry were all the branches and all the trees black and burnt as it had been by fire, and the ground all parched and black atop with no green, and full of great cracks. "Damsel," saith Messire Gawain, "Right loathly is this forest and right hideous. Goeth it on far like this?" "Sir." saith she, "For nine leagues Welsh goeth it on the same, but we shall pass not through the whole thereof."