Igraine stood and looked at him in some pity while the horse snuffed at her, staring with great wistful eyes as though for help or sympathy. The man was young, with a certain nobility of early manhood on his face, and it seemed to her very pitiful that he should be cut off thus in life's spring. As she looked at him she noted that he was slim of figure, and not much above middle height. A sudden fancy took her on the instant. She tethered the horse, and kneeling down by the man her fingers were soon busy at the buckles and joints of his armour. Ungirding his sword, she drew it from the scabbard and set it upright at his head, sheathing Brastias's in its place. Having stripped off his armour and long surcoat she covered him reverently with her cloak, slung the horse's bridle round her wrist, and gathering up his arms and helmet went back to the barrow where she had passed the night. The wood had received a woman in the dress of a woman; it gave in exchange a knight on a grey horse--a knight in black armour blazoned with gold under a surcoat of violet cloth. The brazen helmet, visored and hooded with mail over nape of neck and throat, gleamed and flashed under the green boughs. There were three lilies, snow-white, and a cloven heart upon the shield, and the horse trappings were bossed and enamelled gold and blue. Igraine rode out from the trees with the pomp of a Launcelot. The grey horse's mane tossed in the wind, the furze rippled on the hillside, the cloud-ships sailed the blue with white sails spread. The girl was aglow with new life under her guise of steel. The essence of manhood seemed to have created itself within her as from the soul of the dead knight, and she suffered the glory of arms with a pride that was almost boyish. Holding out from the trees at a solemn pace, she headed westward down the valley along the grass slopes that slid between scrub and thicket to the sea. On the road below her a company of spears trailed eastward uphill in a snakelike column that glittered through the green. Pushing on boldly across ground where the battle had raged hotly the night before, she reached the road as the head of the column swung up at a dull tramp on their march home for Caerleon. Gruffing her voice in her throat she hailed the knight who headed the troop for news of the battle of yesterday, posing as one late on the scene, and sore at having struck no blow for Britain. The knight drew aside, and letting his men tramp by, he gave tersely the tale of the fight as he had seen it from King Nentres's lines. "St. Jude be blessed," said Igraine at the end thereof. "I am glad, friend, of these tidings. As for the field, it looks to have been as bloody a one as ever I set eyes on." "Bloody enough," quoth the man, giving his moustache a twirl; "too bloody for Gilomannius and dead Vortigern's whelp." "What of Uther?" "Scarce a scratch." "King Meliograunt?" "Wounded, but drunk as the devil." "And Gorlois of Cornwall?"