Nor shall you think ill of him because he left that beautiful lady who was his betrothed wife to seek the Grail. For wit you that the Grail was thought by all the world to be the greatest and the most important thing in that world; and its recovery was adjudged to be the most splendid and the noblest deed that any knight could undertake. Wherefore it was that Sir Bors would surrender all his hope of love and of riches and of worldly honor to seek for that Grail. This he did not for his own glory but for the glory of heaven, and not for his own honor, but for the honor of Paradise, where that Grail really belonged. Wherefore he would turn aside from all that the world had to offer him and would direct his face and all his endeavor to the recovery of that sacred chalice, content, if he should recover it or aid in its recovery, to sacrifice all the world for the sake of that recovery. For be it said at this place that the Lady Leisette did not wait the return of Sir Bors, but, finding him gone, she took for her husband a certain noble knight of that kingdom, and he ruled that land in her behalf with great benignity of judgment and with high honor of knightly wisdom. Now pass we from the story of Sir Bors and turn we to the further adventures of Sir Galahad at that time, as followeth. [Illustration] [Illustration: Sir Galahad rides with the Lady] [Illustration] Chapter Seventh _How Sir Galahad smote down Sir Gawaine, and how he accompanied a Fair Lady to the seashore. And of what happened thereafter._ Now, after Sir Galahad had smitten down Sir Launcelot, as aforetold of, he rode for a long while in a wild forest and had many adventures of divers sorts, of which no account hath been given, though mention is made of them in the ancient histories of those things which I have read. That while he dwelt in the forest and slept in the forest, and was fed, when he was an hungered, by the people of the forest. So it befell that one morning he rode out from the forest and found himself in an open country that sloped down very deep to a valley, as though it were a deep bowl of the earth. [Sidenote: _Sir Galahad beholds several knights in the valley._] And Sir Galahad sat upon his horse on the edge of that bowl and gazed down into it. And he beheld a great way off a castle; and he beheld that there was a concourse of many knights gathered about that castle. For the early sunlight shone down upon the armor of those knights, so that the armor caught the light and flung it back again as it were in brilliant points of pure and blazing flame. Then Sir Galahad said to himself, “What is that concourse of knights, and why gather they around about that castle in such a wise?” And he said to himself, “I will ride down thither into the valley, and will see for myself what is the meaning of that assembly.” [Sidenote: _Sir Galahad bespeaketh those knights._]