He went slowly down the hillside, his mind heavy with thought. When he was come to the place of the King his father, lo, Pendragon and all his fierce chivalry came out to meet him, for the archdruid had foretold that the great King to be had received his mystic initiation among the holy silence of the hills. “I am no more Snowbird the child,” the boy said, looking at them fearlessly, and as though already King. “Henceforth I am Arth-Uthyr,[2] for my place is in the Great Bear which we see yonder in the north.” [2] Pronounced _Arth-Uir_, or _Arth-Ur_. In ancient British _Arth_ means Bear, and _Uthyr_ great, wondrous. So all there acclaimed him as Arthur, the wondrous one of the stars, the Great Bear. “I am old,” said Pendragon, “and soon you shall be King, Arthur my son. So ask now a great boon of me and it shall be granted to you.” Then Arthur remembered his dream. “Father and King,” he said, “when I am the King after you I shall make a new order of knights, who shall be strong and pure as the Immortal Ones, and be tender as women, and simple as little children. But first I ask of you seven flawless virgin knights to be of my chosen company. To-morrow let the wood-wrights make for me a round daïs or table such as that where we eat our roasted meats and drink from the ale-horns, but round and of a size whereat I and my chosen knights may sit at ease.” The King listened, and all there. “So be it,” said the King. Then Arthur chose the seven flawless virgin knights, and called them to him. “Ye are now Children of the Great Bear,” he said, “and comrades and liegemen to me, Arthur, who shall be King of the West. And ye shall be known as the Knights of the Round Table. But no man shall make a mock of that name and live: and in the end that name shall be so great in the mouths and minds of men that they shall consider no glory of the world to be so great as to be the youngest and frailest of that knighthood.” * * * * * And that is how Arthur, the son of Pendragon, who three years later became King of the West, read the Rune of the Stars that are called the Great Bear, and took their name upon him, and from the strongest and purest and noblest of the land made Knighthood, such as the world had not seen, such as the world since has not known. * * * * * Very different, a cruder legend of the Polestar, the drift of which I heard some months ago from a fisherman of Ross, ‘foregathered with’ in the Sound of Morvern.