By the palace there was such a press that the white horse came to a halt, hemmed in by a sea of vociferous faces. Igraine, in a gown of violet, was leaning from her statue, and looking at Gorlois. Her glance seemed to magnetise him, for he turned and stared full at the girl as she stood slightly above him in the glory of her beauty and her pride. Long looked Gorlois, like a man smitten with a sudden charm. Then he wrenched the coronet from his casque, and spurring his horse through the crowd, rode close to the statue whose knees were clasped by Igraine's arm. It was the statue of Fame crowned by Love with a wreath of laurels. So, Gorlois, with head bowed, held up the coronet on the cross of his sword, and gave Igraine his glory. II Splendid in arms, magnificent in fortune, Gorlois of Cornwall held high place in the war lore and romances of the green isle of Britain. Ask any pikeman or gallowglass whose crest he would have advance in the van in the tough tussle of a charge home, and he would tell you of Gorlois or of Uther. Question any merchant as to the most prolific purse in the kingdom, and he would beam seraphically and talk to you of Gorlois. So much for the man's reputation. Physically he was tall, big-chested, lean-limbed, with a square jaw and eyes that shone ever alert, as though watching a knife in an enemy's hand. You could read the swift, soaring, masterful spirit of him in the bleak lines of his handsome face, and the soldierly carriage of his head. He was quick as a hawk, supple and springy as a willow, keen and eager in his action as a born fighter should be. When you saw him move, the lean hard fibre of him seemed as tense and tough as the string of a five-foot bow. Though he might seem to the eye all impulse, there was a leopard reason in him that made him the more formidable. He was no mere fighting machine--rather a man of brain and sinew whose cunning went far to back his strength. Meliograunt ruled in Cornwall in those days, Meliograunt who was to rear young Tristram for the plaguing of Mark, and the love of the fair Isoult. Gorlois was Meliograunt's nephew, holding many castles, woods, and wild coastlands towards Lyonesse, lording it also over other lands in Britain, houses in London and Winchester, and some mountainous regions in Gore, where Urience held sway. Mordaunt had been his father, a great knight who had done many brave deeds in his day. His grandsire, Gravaine, famed for his wisdom, had fought abroad and died in battle. Gorlois had ancestry enough to breed worship in him, and after Ambrosius and black Uther he held undoubted precedence of all knights in Britain.