"Be wiser for falling," Arthur said. "Your chair is in the hall vacant. Take it again and be my knight once more."
So Balin went back into the old hall of the Knights of the Round Table, and they all clashed their cups together drinking his welcome, and sang until all of Arthur's banners of war hanging overhead began to stir as they always did on the battlefield.
Meanwhile the men who had gone to collect the taxes from King Pellam returned.
"Sir King," they cried to Arthur, "We scarcely could see Pellam for the gloom in his hall. That man who used to be one of your roughest and most riotous enemies is now living like a monk in his castle and has all sorts of holy things about him, and says he has given up all matters of the world. He wouldn't even talk about the tribute money and told us that his heir Sir Garlon, attended to his business for him, so we went to Garlon and after a struggle we got it. Then we came away, but as we passed through the deep woods we found one of your knights lying dead, killed by a spear. After we had buried him, we talked with an old woodman who told us that there's a demon of the woods who had probably slain the knight. This demon, he said, was once a man who lived all alone and learned black magic. He hated people so much that when he died he became a fiend. The woodman showed us the cave where he has seen the demon go in and out and where he lives. We saw the print of a horse's hoof, but no more."
"Foully and villainously slain!" cried Arthur thinking of his poor killed knight in the woods. "Who will go hunt this demon of the woods for me?"
"I!" exclaimed Balan, ready to dart instantly away, but first he embraced Balin, saying, "Good brother, hear; don't let your angry passions conquer you, fight them away. Remember how these knights of the Round Table welcomed you back. Be a loving brother with them and don't imagine that there is hatred among them here any more than there is in heaven itself."
When bad Balan left, Balin set himself to learn how to curb his wildness and become a courteous and manly knight. He always hovered about Lancelot, the pattern knight of all the court, to see how he did, and when he noticed Lancelot's sweet smiles and his little pleasant words that gladdened every knight or churl or child that he passed, Balin sighed like some lame boy who longed to scale a mountain top and could scarcely limp up one hundred feet from the base.
"It's Lancelot's worship of the queen that helps to make him gentle," said he to himself. "If I want to be gentle I must serve and worship lovely Queen Guinevere too. Suppose I ask the King to let me have some token of hers on my shield instead of these pictures of wild beasts with big teeth and grins. Then whenever I see it I'll forget my wild heats and violences."
"What would you like to bear on your shield?" asked the king when Balin spoke to him about his wish.
"The queen's own crown-royal," replied Balin.