Page:The Mabinogion.djvu/201

172 me?" "My Lord, thou didst not command me to do so, else would I not have allowed him to depart."  "What way dost thou think that he took?"  "I know not, except that he went along the high road."  And they turned their horses' heads that way, and seeing the tracks of the horses upon the high road, they followed.  And when the maiden beheld the dawning of the day, she looked behind her, and saw vast clouds of dust coming nearer and nearer to her.  And thereupon she became uneasy, and she thought that it was the Earl and his host coming after them.  And thereupon she beheld a knight appearing through the mist.  "By my faith," said she, "though he should slay me, it were better for me to receive my death at his hands, than to see him killed without warning him. My Lord," she said to him, "seest thou yonder man hastening after thee, and many others with him?" "I do see him," said he; "and in despite of all my orders, I see that thou wilt never keep silence."  Then he turned upon the knight, and with the first thrust he threw him down under his horse's feet.  And as long as there remained one of the fourscore knights, he overthrew every one of them at the first onset. And from the weakest to the strongest, they all attacked him one after the other, except the Earl:  and last of all the Earl came against him also.  And he broke his lance, and then he broke a second.  But Geraint turned upon him, and struck him with his lance upon the centre of his shield, so that by that single thrust the shield was split, and all his armour broken, and he himself was brought over his horse's crupper to the ground, and was in peril of his life.  And Geraint drew near to him; and at the noise of the trampling of his horse the Earl revived. "Mercy, Lord," said he to Geraint. And Geraint granted him mercy. But through the hardness of the ground where they had fallen, and the violence of the stroke which they had received, there was not a single knight amongst them that escaped without receiving a fall, mortally severe, and grievously painful, and desperately wounding, from the hand of Geraint.

And Geraint journeyed along the high road that was