xt7qft8dg85k https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qft8dg85k/data/mets.xml Frost, William Henry, 1863-1902. 1923  books b92-243-31440221 English Charles Scribner's Sons, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Arthur, King Juvenile literature.Burleigh, Sydney Richmond, 1853-1931. Court of King Arthur  : stories from the land of the Round Table / William Henry Frost ; illustrated by Sydney Richmond Burleigh. text Court of King Arthur  : stories from the land of the Round Table / William Henry Frost ; illustrated by Sydney Richmond Burleigh. 1923 2002 true xt7qft8dg85k section xt7qft8dg85k 
THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR
 




THE SCRIBNER SERIES

  FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

EACH WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR

          BOOKS FOR BOYS
THE MODERN VIKINGS           By H. 1. Boyesen
WILL SHAKESPEARE'S LITTLE LAD  By Imogen Clark
THE BOY SCOUT and Other Stories for Boys
STORIES FOR BOYS       By Richard Harding Davis
HANS BRINKER, or, The Silver Skate.
                          By Mary Mapes Dodge
THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY     By Edward Eggleston
TRUE TALES OF ARCTIC HEROISM IN THE NEW
WORLD                   By Adolphus W. Greely
THE COURT OF KING ARTHUR By William Henry Frost
BY PIKE AND DYKE
WITH LEE IN VIRGINIA
WITH WOLFE IN CANADA
REDSKIN AND COWBOY             By G. A. Henty
AT WAR WITH PONTIAC           By Kirk Munroe
TOMMY TROT'S VISIT TO SANTA CLAUS and
A CAPTURED SANTA CLAUS   By Thomas Nelson Page
BOYS OF ST. TIMOTHY'S   By Arthur Stanwood Pier
DAVID BALFOUR
KIDNAPPED
TREASURE ISLAND
BLACK ARROW            By Robert Louis Stevenson
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
                               By Jules Verne
ON THE OLD KEARSARGE
IN THE WASP'S NEST     By Cyrus Townsend Brady
THE BOY SETTLERS
THE BOYS OF FAIRPORT          By Noah Brooks
THE CONSCRIPT OF 1813     By Erckmann-Cbatriau
THE STEAM-SHOVEL MAN         By I'alph D. Paine
THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE       By Frank H. Spearman
THE STRANGE GRAY CANOE    By Paul G. Tomlinson
THE ADVENTURES OF A FRESHMAN By J. L. Williams
JACK HALL, or. The Schoo.l Days of an American Boy
                              By Robert Gran.t

         BOOKS FOR GIRLS
THE JANUARY GIRL               By Joslyn Gray
SMITH COLLEGE STORIES      By Josephine Daskam
THE HALLOWELL PARTNERSHIP
                      By Katharine Holland Brown
MY WONDERFUL VISIT           By Elizabeth Hill
SARAH CREWE, or, VWhat Happened at Miss Minchin's
                      Ly .rancn 1 Hodg!on Burnett


CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

 This page in the original text is blank.


 















































"Like the halo of a saint."

 

THE COURT



OF KING



ARTHUR



STORIES FROMI THE LANiD OF
    THE ROUND TABLE


           BY
   WILLIAM HENRY FROST,



ILLUSTRATED BY SYDNEY RICHMOND BURLEIGH






         NEW YORK
   CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
           1923

 




























       COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


Printed in the United States of Ainerica

 



















          MY AUNT


30sevine =W  tefiefh cofern


  MY EARLIFS'T COMPANION AND

      GUIDE IN LANDS OF

          WOINDERS

 This page in the original text is blank.


 










               CONTENTS


                 CHAPTER I

HOW WE CAME TO LONDON, .


                CHAPTER I

THE NEW KING AT ST. PAUL'S,


                CHAPTER III



THE ROUND TABLE, .



.. . 37



                CHAPTER IV

NOT GALAHAD, BUT LANCELOT,.               64


                CHAPTER V



THE KITCHEN Boy, .  .


                CHAPrER VI

THE SPAR1ROW-HAWK,  .



                CHAPTER VII

ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE SEVERN,



PAO



. 7



, .  83



w4

 



viii



Contents



                CHAPTER VIII

THE PATHS THAT ENID RODE,


                 CHAPTER IX

A LITTLE JOURNEY IN CORNWALL, .


                 CHAPTER X



WHO THE KING REALLY WAS,



                 CHAPTER XI

SOME LITTLE ADVENTURES OF LANCELOT,



                CHAPTER XII

THE CHIME OF THE SEA, .


                CHAPTER XIII

HOW THE SCABBARD WAS LOST,


                CHAPTER XIV

KING ARTHUR'S GRAVESTONE, .



,PAGS
.  171



. 192



.  . 206



. 222



    239



. 251



 272


 




















               ILLUSTRATIONS



" LIKE THE HALO OF A SAINT "  . . . . . . Frontispiece
                                              FACING
                                              PAGE
"FOR A WHOLE YEAR HE WAS THERE IN THE KITCHEN " .  90


" BESIDE HIM WAS A DOG AS BIG AS A HORSE " . . . . 156


" THEY CAME NEARER TO US AND GATHERED AROUND US " 220

 This page in the original text is blank.

 







         BEFORE WE SET OUT

  IF you are to follow our journey in the Land
of the Round Table, you must know at the
start that there are other guides there than I.
You do know them, or some of them, already,
I suppose-older, wiser, better guides than I.
They have been my guides on many happy
journeys in that land, and they will be yet, I
hope, on many more. First of them always,
in my thought, though not in time, is the
gentle knight Sir Thomas Malory. No one
else has ever told so much of King Arthur and
told it so well as he. Older than he-oldest of
them all-was Nennius, and then there was
Geoffrey of M'Ionmouth, who wrote a delight-
ful book, with nothing else so delightful in it
as the joke of calling it a history. After him
came Wace and the good priest Layamon, to
whom surely the Lord was merciful. There
were many whose names we do not know, and
some whose names we cannot even guess at.

 

Before   We Set Out



There were the makers of those wonderful
stories called the Mabinogion, which Lady
Charlotte Guest has let us look over her boys'
3houlders to read. If every mother could
make such a gift to her children as this of
Lady Charlotte Guest's, how rich the world
would be! Sometimes as I rewrote the stories
that she has rewritten, I could scarcely help
using her very words, because it seemed that
to use any other words than hers would hurt
the story. And of all who have written of
King Arthur the greatest is Lord Tennyson.
No one who writes of the Round Table now
can say just how much of the spirit of his
stories he owes to him. It is easy for us to go
back to the older books and to think that we
are reading them and learning all that is in
them for ourselves, but, whether we know it or
not, we are always reading them by the light
that he has given us.
  If this book of mine can show you enough
of the land of King Arthur to make you wish
to see more of it with these other guides, it
will open your way to an unbounded field of
beauty and enjoyment.



xi.


 












THE COURT OF KING.ARTHUR


              CHAPTER I
       HO'W WE CAME TO LONDON

 HELEN'S mother said that I might go, too,
if I liked, and Helen said that I must go, too.
This Helen is a very young woman, with an
extravagant fondness for stories. If you ever
chance to meet her or anybody like her, never
let her find out that you can tell stories or
that you know anything about stories. That
is, if your time is worth anything and if you
do not enjoy telling stories for a very large
part of it. Because, if you do let her know,
you will never have any more peace. As for
me, my time is not worth anything and I en.
joy telling stories to any extent, so it doesn't
matter.
  But about this question of my going, too.



I

0,

 

2     The Court of King Arthur



Helen and her mGther had taken it into their
sensible heads to go abroad for the summer.
By listening carefully to all they said, when-
ever I got a chance, I could not find out that
they had any particular plans beyond that.
Neither of them had ever been abroad before,
and they seemed to have a sort of notion that
abroad meant Europe, and not any part of it,
but the whole of it. I heard them talking now
and then of the Scotch Highlands, of the Al-
hambra, of the Rhine, of the Irish lakes, of the
Alps, and of seeing Naples and then dying,
and I felt sure that I should die before I saw
Naples if I tried to go to half the places where
they thought they were going.
  That was why I did not care to say that I
would go till I knew just how much trouble
I was likely to get into. It was not an easy
thing, by any rmeans, for me to pretend that I
did not care much whether I went or not.
The memory of that glorious Rhine, with its
towering banks green and gray with vines and
castles, and of those calm, white-topped, giant
hills of Switzerland, so restful in their majesty,
stirred up longings in me that I should not
have wished Helen and her mother to know,
till I had quite made up my mind to go with
themr. Still more than these, the grassy hill.
side pastures, the fields full of scarlet poppies,
the deep green hedges, and the smooth rivers

 
How   We Came to London



of England drew me toward them. They
called to me and said: " Come to us again
and be glad that you are here to see us and
that we are here to be seen."
  I can never think of these lands as real lands,
where real people live and work, and are weary,
and have real cares and troubles. They are
all story lands, poet lands, fairy lands to me.
I never saw them-and I anm very glad of it-
till I had known them long in books of old
tales and in songs and in books of newer tales.
And so they came to be to me, and they will
always be, the countries of dim old kings, of
knights with flashing arms and streaming
plumes, of ladies wvho looked down on them
from  the walls of castles, of giants and of
dwarfs; of stranger creatures still, of wizards
and witches, of men who changed to wolves and
women who changed to swans, of misty gods
who rode on the storm winds, and heroes whom
no sword could wound. Of course I know
that the people there are real, and of course I
have seen them working and playing and buy.
ing and selling and quarrelling together, but
they did not look real-only like a part of the
stories.
  And not the least charm of these countries
to me was that they were across the ocean and
that we must inake a voyage to reach them.
For of all the people and the things that I love,



3

 
4       The Court of King Ar4thur



I love none, except a few of my friends, better
than ships. I count ships among the people
that I love, not among the things. Ships are
noble, strong, beautiful, happy, living beings.
It is absurd to think that they are anything
else. When one of them has taken hundreds
of us into herself and is bearing us from land
to land, when she is driving along with us, find-
ing her way alone through the darkness, with
nothing but the stars above her and nothing
but endless water all around-don't tell me
that she is nothing but a dead machine! I
have waked up in the night and felt the creat-
ure's great, hot heart beating, and I know.
And when she is rushing on and on, by day
and night, trying to cross the sea quicker than
any other ship has ever crossed it; when she
is trying to bring two great countries nearer
together than they have ever been before, do
you want me to believe that she does not know
what she is doing, that only the captain on the
bridge and the man at the wheel and the man
at the engine know  Not a bit of it. I have
stood at her prow and have seen her joy in her
plunging and rising and sweeping through the
waves; I have seen her dash the water into
pearls by day and into glowing flame by night.
Oh, she knows what she is doing better than
anybody could tell her.
  So you see I really wanted to go very much

 
Ho    W We Caine to London



5



indeed. And when I happened to overhear
some little remark about the Parthenon I
thought that the time had come to decide.
" Could you give me any sort of notion," I
asked, " whether you are really going to the
Parthenon or to Ultima Thule, or where Be.
cause it might help me to tell whether I can go
with you."
  " We don't know in the least where we are
going," Helen's mother answered; "we only
talk about what happens to come into our
heads. If you will come with us, we will go
just wherever you like."
  " Wherever I like Do you know what sort
of promise you are making"
  "Why, it doesn't make any difference to us
where we go," said Helen's mother, again, " and
if you have any choice, we may as well go where
you want to go as anywhere else. Only, of
course, you must let me go to Paris. If you
will say that I may go to Paris just when I
like, you may plan everything else yourself."
  " I say so, then, since you have given me this
sudden authority."
  " Then it is agreed, and you will go with us"
  ' I will go with you."
  I don't know why it is that Americans who
go to England always make a straight line for
London. There are plenty of other beautiful
and interesting places that they ought to see

 

6     The Court of King Arthur

and that they mean to see. Often, indeed, they
leave London again and go straight back on
their own tracks. It seems strange, but it was
not for us to break through so firmly fixed a
custom.
And so we came to Londoa.


 










CHAPTER II



      THE NEW KING AT ST. PAULS

 THERE are many good books that will tell
 you all sorts of useful and delightful things
about London, if you care to know them.
You xvill not find them here, for they have all
been told much better than I could tell them.
We saw as much of London as we could; it
would take nothing less than a lifetime to see it
all. It happened one day that we had been
wandering around and about and up and down
in St. Paul's Cathedral. We had been along
the aisles and down into the crypt and had
seen the tombs of great men till we were tired
of them. We had climbed up to the Whis-
pering Gallery and the Stone Gallery and
the Golden Gallery, and we had gone higher
still, till we were not sure whether we were in
the ball or the cross. We have never been
quite sure since. We were sure, when we
came down, that we felt a trifle tired after so

 


8     TN Court of King Arthur



much climbing, and that we wanted to rest for
a few minutes on one of the benches outside
the church, where we could watch the streams
of carriages and carts and omnibuses and peo-
ple going past, and, nearer to us, the fountain
and the flocks of doves all about the walks.
  "And now that we have nothing better to
do," I said, " do you want to hear a little his-
tory and then a story"
  "' I don't care about the history," Helen an-
swered.
  " But you must hear the history before you
can hear the story. You can't have any cake
till you eat your bread."
  " Then I will eat my bread. There isn't very
much of it, is there"
  " No, only a little. Very well, then. There
was a time, more than a thousand years ago,
when this London and this England were not
by any means the good places to live in that
they are now. There was no good queen up
the river at Windsor, and there was no castle
for her to live in if she had been there. Worse
than this, there was no Parliament at West-
minster. Worst of all, there were plenty of
lords, wvho did little but misrule the people and
fight among themselves. There was no one
above the lords; no one could rule the whole
country, though there were many who would
have liked to try. There was a King of Scot.

 

      The New King at St. Paul's      S

land, and there was a King of Ireland, and there
was a King of North Wales, and a King of
Cornwall, and one of Cameliard, wherever that
was, and one of the Out Isles, wherever they
were. There were a dozen or twenty more
kings, perhaps, scattered about, one here and
one there, but they were no better and no more
powerful than the lords. Indeed, the more
power any of them had the worse it was for
their people; and of all England together
there was no king at all.
  "' There had been kings of England once,
but the last of them had been dead for a long
time and he had left nobody to take his place.
Uther Pendragon was far from being a good
man, but he was not a bad sort of king, for
those times. The most of the kings and lords
were robbers, and the people expected it, but
when there was one robber greater than all the
rest he kept the others down a little, and it was
better for the people than when there were a
hundred robbers, each one plundering them
for himself. That was the way after Uther
Pendragon died. Every lord tried to be a
greater thief than every other lord, and every
one of them, secretly or openly, hoped that he
might grow great enough to make himself king.
  " There were not many cities then, and the
people lived in little towns and villages, far
away from one another, where the lords and

 


IO    The Court of King Arthur



their armed men could do with them what they
pleased. So they made the poor people work
at building their castles. They gave them no
pay and they left them no time to keep their
shops or till their fields, so that while the men
worked their wives and their children starved.
Then they would take the land itself and drive
the people away from it to die of hunger or to
steal and be hanged for it. If they heard that
any common man had saved a little money,
they put him in a dungeon wvhere there were
snakes and toads, and kept him there till he
promised to show them where he had hidden
it. Then the lords fought with one another,
and brought bands of armed men into one an.
other's lands, and trampled down the fields of
grain, and burned the houses, and killed the
people. And perhaps that was the best thing
for them.
  " So the people loved to remember Uther
Pendragon, and wished, but scarcely hoped,
that there might be another king as good as
he. They sat by their poor fires in the winter
nights, and perhaps some of the old men told
them how, long ago, the Romans came from far
over Lhe sea and over the land and conquered
the country and kept it for many years. ' They
were cruel fighters, the Romans,' the old men
said, ' but they kept some kind of order in the
land, and it was better than this.'

 
The New King at St. Paul's



" Then they told how the heathen Saxons
came, after the Romans had gone. Sometimes
they drove the people out of their houses, and
sometimes they made peace with the kings,
who were strong mnen in those days. They
were usually bad men, too, but it was better than
this. And then the old men told of Uther Pen-
dragon.  ' He was the best of them all,' they
said. 'Some of you younger men can remem-
ber him; it was not so many years ago that he
died. But he left us no son to rule as he had
ruled, and there is no hope now.' And they
wiped their eyes with the backs of their hard
hands, though it was long since there had been
any such frivolous things as tears there.
  " There were some of the lords, no doubt, who
were not so bad as the others, but it was not
easy in those days to be a good man and a lord
at the same time. You see, if a lord happened
to be a good man, he would not steal from the
others, but they would all steal from him just
the same as from anybody else. So he always
lost as much as the others and never got so
much back, and in that way he was likely to
grow poor prctty fast.
  "Yet there were a few such men. And so,
in the bright summer days, as they worked to-
gether in the fields, the poor people would now
and then talk a little more hopefully. They
felt more cheerful in the summer, I suppose,



I I

 


12    The Court of King Arthur



because then they were only hungry, instead
of hungry and cold both, as they were in the
winter.
"' There is old Sir Ector riding by, with his
two sons,' one of the younger men would say;
' if all the lords were like them, it would oe bet.
ter for all of us.'
  "' Yes,' some old man would answer, ' Sir
Ector was one of Uther Pendragon's men. The
old King gave him all those lands that he has
around London; he is rich enough; he does
not need to steal from the poor.' The old
men, you see, who remembered the better days,
were the ones who were most hopeless and
bitter.
  "1 ' Does not need to steal from the poor!' one
of the women would say; 'he would not steal.
He is a good man, and his wife is a good wom.
an. When my mother was sick last winter
our house was so cold and damp that she would
have died, but Sir Ector's wife heard about her
and she let me bring her to the castle, and the
servants took care of her till she got well.'
  "'Yes,' the old man might say again, 'and
what happened then When your own lord
heard of it he went to Sir Ector and said that
he must pay him money for taking one of his
people off his land, and, when Sir Ector called
his men and drove him away, your lord sent
his men to burn your house for revenge. What

 

Th e New King at SI. Paul's



I3



good did it do you or your mother to save her
life It
  - Nobody could answer such a question as
this, but still somebody else would say that
there might be better times if only such a man
as Sir Ector could be King of England, and
one of D-,is sans after him. And the old man
would growl again and say: 'Which of his
sons  It would be Kay, because he is the
older, and Kay is a harsh, surly boy; he would
be as bad as any of these lords are now.'
  " 'Yt they say Kay is strong and brave,' one
of the younger men would answer, ' and he is
to be made a knight next Hallowmas. But I
like his brother Arthur better. He is as kind
and generous as his father. And I have seen
him playing with the village boys, just as if he
were not a lord's son, and he could run faster
than any of them and throw a stone and shoot
an arrow farther and straighter than any of
them.'
  4 I What is the use to talk about them ' the
old man would say at last. ' They can do noth-
ing against these robbers that build their cas-
tles all over the land, and they do not try to do
anything. And there is that old fool Merlin.
Why does he never do anything for the peo-
ple'
  " I How do you make out Merlin a fool  They
say he knows more than any one else in the

 


14    The Court of King Arthur



world, and he can do wonderful things by
magic.'
  "' That is just why I call him a fool. He can
do wonderful things, and yet he never does
anything. Is he not a fool, if he knows so
much and could do so much for the people and
for the country, and yet does nothing at all ' "
  "Is this the story or the history" Helen
asked.
  " This is the story."
  "I thought it sounded more like a story.
Where did the history leave off"
  " I am afraid I can't tell you exactly. You
see, the history and the story are so mixed up
together in the most of this that I have been
telling you that it might not be quite safe to
say that any of it was entirely history. But
there is this strange thing about many of these
old tales that I am just beginning to tell you:
the people who like history better than stories
generally think that they are all stories and
nothing else, and the people who like stories
better try to believe that there is a good deal
of history in them. When you have heard
them I am sure you will want to believe that
they are all true. That is because you like
stories better than history.
  "But now for the story. It was this same
Merlin-this old fool, who could do so much
and did so little-who had scarcely thought of

 

The Neaw King a! St. PaulI's



anything all these long, terrible years but of
helping England and the poor people in it. He
was a strange man, this Merlin. He was an
old man, and people said that he knew every-
thing that ever had been and everything that
ever should be. Nobody knew who his father
was. There was nothing so very wonderful
about that, but some said that he never had
any father, and there was something wonderful
about that. Others said that his father was
not a man, but a spirit of the air, and that that
was why he knew so much. He could take any
shape he chose, they said. Now and then some-
body would tell how he had met a child or a
young man or a beggar, and how the child or
the young man or the beggar had told him of
strange things that were soon to happen, and
then had vanished. Then he knew that it wvas
Merlin, who had chosen to take some other
shape than his own, and always the things that
Merlin said proved to be true.
  " Merlin had been the friend of Uther Pen-
dragon. The people could remember wonder-
ful things that he had done for the old King,
and that was why they thought it strange that
he did nothing now. But Merlin had his own
reasons for waiting. He knew what he had to
do when the time came. And now he knew
that the time had come. Just when another of
those cruel, cold, hungry winters was coming



I 5

 


I 6    iThe Court of King Arthur



upon the people, Merlin went to the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury.
  "The Archbishop of Canterbury was a wise
and good man. IHe was at the head of the
Church for all England, and he was the only
man who was at the head of anything for all
England. No doubt that was why Merlin went
to him. 'It is time,' said Merlin, ' to find a
king for England.'
  M' Merlin,' the Archbishop answered, ' these
wicked lords are killing all the people and
spoiling all the land. What can we do Hoow
shall we find a king'
  "' It is you who must find him,' said Merlin.
'Will you do exactly what I tell you and not
ask me why'
  " People who know everything never like to
answer questions. It is most unfortunate, too.
The rest of the world might learn so much
from them.
  "' Merlin,' said the Archbishop, 'socne say
that you are the son of an evil spirit. Yet you
come into my church and you are not afraid of
the cross, or the holy water, or any of the holy
things. That is not like the son of an evil
spirit, and I have never known you to do any.
thing but good. I will do what you tell me,
and if you do not wish me to know why, I will
not ask.'
"' Then,' said Merlin, ' send to all the great

 

Tikle iVew  K ing- at SI. Paul's



lords of England and bid them come together
in London at Christmas. Tell them that when
they are met it shall be shown to them who is
their rightful king.'
  " As soon as Merlin had said this he was
gone. The Archbishop did not see him go.
He only looked at the place where Merlin had
been and sawv that there was nobody there.
People who knew Merlin were used to little
things like this, and they did not mind them
much. Still the Archbishop felt that Merlin
had told him a great deal less than he should
like to know. Perhaps you would like to hear
where Merlin went, and when you have heard
you will know more about it than the Arch-
bishop did. He travelled faster than the wind,
and he went away up into the north of England
to visit an old man named Bleys. Bleys was
much older than Merlin himself, and he was
very wise. It was said that he was Merlin's
master when Merlin was a child. Why he
needed a master I don't know, for Merlin knew
more the day he was born than Bleyvs ever knew
in his life. But now Bleys was writing a book,
a sort of history of England, and he never
wrote anything in it except just what Merlin
told him. And when Merlin was missing, as
he was pretty often, he was usually up there
in the North, telling Bleys what to write in his
book. I am sorry the book got lost, for it



I 7

 


i8    The Court of King Arthur



might have settled a good many things that
have since been in doubt. Still it never would
have settled anything at all if it were as hard
to understand as a certain long prophecy of
Merlin's which did not get lost.
  " But the Archbishop believed that whatever
Merlin told him to do must be right, so he sent
messengers to all the lords and told them to
come to London on Christmas to find out who
was to be king. Then there was a mighty stir
among the lords, you may be sure. Every one
of them, secretly or openly, wanted to be king,
and I suppose at least every other one secretly
thought that he might be. One thought that
the Archbishop would be his friend and would
choose him. Another thought that he could
bribe the rest and get them to choose him.
Another thought he could scare the people into
choosing him. Probably none of them felt so
completely puzzled about what was to happen
as the Archbishop himself.
  " So when Christmas came all the lords met
in a church here in London. Some of the little
kings were there too. They were all ready to
cut one another's throat at a second's notice.
and they all looked very meekly and very
reverently at the Archbishop to see what he
was going to do first. Now, this story that I
am telling you is one that I have read in sev-
real books, but only one of them all says any.

 

The New King at St. Paul's '



thing about what church it was where the
lords met. That one, the one I like best of all,
says:  ' The greatest church  of London,
whether it were Paul's or not the French book
maketh no mention.' Now, if the good old
knight who wrote this book did not feel sure
6 whether it were Paul's or not,' I shall take the
liberty of believing that it was Paul's. So I
tell you that they met here in this very church
where we are, and that it was just over there,
near where Powle's Cross was afterwards, that
they discovered such a wonderful thing.
  " I know very well that the little book about
the Cathedral that we bought of the verger says
that i In 6io, Ethelbert, King of Kent, under-
took the building of the Cathedral of St. Paul.'
I know very well, too, that that wuas some hun-
dred years or so after the time I am telling
you about, but that makes no difference to me.
There are two ways of believing things. You
may believe them with your head, or you may
believe them with your heart, and if you al-
ways like stories as well as you do now, vou
will often find it pleasant to believe things with
your heart that you may not be quite able to
believe with your head. So I believe that it
was Paul's.
  "When they were all met the Archbishop
had not the faintest notion of what he was to
do with them, but he thought that a good, safe



19

 


20     The Court of King Arthur



thing to do in any case would be to say mass
So he said mass. When the mass was over
some of the lords, finding that nothing was
likely to happen inside the church, came out-
side. And then, as they walked about, they
found the wonderful thing that had appeared
all of itself, just over there near the end of the
choir. It was this: First there was a big
square block of stone; then on the top of the
stone there was an anvil; and then there was
a sword stuck straight through the anvil and
the stone. The sword had a beautiful jewelled
hilt, and on it there were letters of gold which
said: 'He who can draw this sword is the
rightful King of England.'
    Ah,' said every one of the lords to himself,
'now it will be very easy for me to show that
I am to be King of England.'
  "Some one had run to tell the Archbishop
about the stone and the anvil and the sword,
and he came to see them for himself. When
he had looked at them he told the lords that
all of them who liked might try to draw the
sword. Of course every one of them wanted
to try, and every one of them did try, but not
one of them could move the sword. At that
every one of them was greatly surprised and
the Archbishop was greatly pleased, for there
was not one among them who he thought was
just the right man to be King of England.

 

The ANew Kiizg at SI. Paul's



  " Then the Archbishop said: 'The true king
is not here, but I know that he will come soon,
and that we shall see him. So I bid you all
to come here again on Twelfth Day, and then
you may all try again to draw the sword, if you
will, and any man in the whole land may try
who will.'
  " So he had a tent set over the stone and he
chose ten good knights to guard it, night and
da,. I don't know why he thought it ought to
be guarded. Anybody except the rightful
King of England might as well try to steal the
church as try to steal that sword. But I am
only telling you just what happened.
  "W Well, to amuse themselves while they were
waiting for Twelfth Day, the lords and the
knights decided to have a tournament on New
Year's Day, in the fields outside the town. Do
you know what a tournament was It was a
sham fight-a play battle.  It was almost as
dangerous as a real battle, for knights were
often killed in tournaments. Indeed, I think
the real difference between a battle and a tour-
nament was that in a battle they usually fought
about something, and in a tournament they
usually fought about nothing.
  " Now, among all the rest who had come to
London, old Sir Ector had come, and he had
brought Kay and Arthur with him. And on
New Year's Day, as the three were riding to



2 1

 


22    The Court of Zing Arthur



the fields to see the tournament, Kay found
that he had forgotten to bring his sword. He
told Arthur to go back to the house where
they were staying and get it, and Arthur, like
a dut