It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious
stranger whom I am going to talk about. He attracted
me by three things: his candid simplicity, his
marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the
restfulness of his company—for he did all
the talking. We fell together, as modest people
will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown
through, and he at once began to say things which
interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly,
flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out
of this world and time, and into some remote era and
old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such
a spell about me that I seemed to move among the specters
and shadows and dust and mold of a gray antiquity,
holding speech with a relic of it! Exactly as
I would speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies,
or my most familiar neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere,
Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir Launcelot of the Lake, Sir
Galahad, and all the other great names of the Table
Round—and how old, old, unspeakably old
and faded and dry and musty and ancient he came to
look as he went on! Presently he turned to me
and said, just as one might speak of the weather,
or any other common matter—
“You know about transmigration of souls; do
you know about transposition of epochs—and
bodies?”
I said I had not heard of it. He was so little
interested—just as when people speak of
the weather—that he did not notice whether
I made him any answer or not. There was half a
moment of silence, immediately interrupted by the
droning voice of the salaried cicerone:
“Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century,
time of King Arthur and the Round Table; said to have
belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor le Desirous; observe
the round hole through the chain-mail in the left
breast; can’t be accounted for; supposed to have
been done with a bullet since invention of firearms—perhaps
maliciously by Cromwell’s soldiers.”
My acquaintance smiled—not a modern smile,
but one that must have gone out of general use many,
many centuries ago—and muttered apparently
to himself:
“Wit ye well, I saw it done.”
Then, after a pause, added: “I did it
myself.”
By the time I had recovered from the electric surprise
of this remark, he was gone.
All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms,
steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the rain
beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about the
eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped
into old Sir Thomas Malory’s enchanting book,
and fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures,
breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and
dreamed again. Midnight being come at length,
I read another tale, for a nightcap—this
which here follows, to wit:
HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SLEW TWO GIANTS, AND MADE A CASTLE FREE
