Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/97

Rh audibly and giving way to other loud expressions of grief.

“What aileth thee, pygmy?” asked the knight, drawing rein beside him.

“Has you lordship seen aught of a beautiful lady with streaming yellow hair, riding a milk-white palfrey, passing this way?” inquired the dwarf, earnestly addressing Prince Arthur.

“I have just followed such a lady into this forest, in the hope of lending her aid and succor,” answered he. “But I could not find her track, after I had lost sight of her.”

“It was my mistress, who is lost to me,” cried the dwarf, still weeping. “Since yester eve we can find nothing of her.”

“And who is your mistress?”

“None other than the Lady Florimel, foster sister to Cupid,” answered the dwarf. “She has long been enamored of Prince Marinell, and hearing yesterday that he had fallen in duel, she fell into deep grief, and suddenly rode off on her palfrey and has not since been heard from.”

Arthur gave him what comfort he might, and sent him back to his lady’s castle. He himself departed at once to stir up all the flower of knighthood to form a league that they might recover and bring pack the lost damsel.

In the mean time Florimel, (for it was indeed she) sped swifter and swifter through the in