"There are three men lurking in the woods behind some oaks and one of them is larger than you, a perfect giant. He told them to attack you as you passed by them."
"If there were a hundred men in the wood and each of them a giant and if they all made for me together I vow it would not anger me so as to have you disobey me. Stand aside while we do battle and when we are done stand by the victor."
At this, while Enid fell back breathing short fits of prayer but not daring to watch, Geraint proceeded to meet his assailants. The giant was the first to dash out for him aiming his lance at Geraint's helmet, but the lance missed and went to one side. Geraint's spear had been a little strained with his first encounter, but it struck through the bulky giant's corselet and pierced his breast, then broke, one-half of it still fast in the flesh as the giant knight fell to the earth. The other two bandits now felt that their support and hero was gone, and when Geraint darted rapidly on them, uttering his terrible warcry as if there were a thousand men behind him to come to his aid, they flew into the woods. But they were soon overtaken and pitilessly put to death. Then Geraint, selecting the best lance, the brightest and strongest among their spears to replace the one he had broken on the giant, he plucked off the gaudy armor from each brigand's body, laid it on the backs of the three horses, tied the bridle reins together and handed them to Enid with the words, "Drive them on before you."
So Enid now followed the wild paths of the gloomy forest with two sets of three horses, each horse laden with his master's jingling weapons and coat of mail. Geraint came after. As they passed out of the wood into the open sky they came to a little town with towers upon a rocky hill, and beneath it a wide meadowland with mowers in it, mowing the hay. Down a stony pathway from the town skipped a fair-haired lad carrying a basket of lunch for the laborers in the field.
"Friend!" cried Geraint, as the lad trotted past him, for he saw that Enid looked very white, "let my lady have something to eat. She is so faint."
"Willingly," the youth answered, "and you too, my lord, even although this feed is very coarse and only fit for the mowers."
He set down his basket and Enid and Geraint alighted and put all the horses to graze, while they sat down on the green sward to have some bread and barley. Enid felt too faint at heart, thinking of the prince's strange conduct, to care a great deal for food, but Geraint was hungry enough and had all the mowers' basket emptied almost before he knew it.
"Boy," he cried half-ashamed, "everything is gone, which is a disgrace. But take one of my horses and his arms by way of payment, choose the very best."
The poor lad, who might as well have had a kingdom given him, reddened with his extreme surprise and delight.
"My lord, you are over-paying me fifty times," he cried.