Balin dashed after this but he was so blinded by his rage that he stumbled against a tree, breaking his lance and falling from his horse. He sprang to his feet and darted off again not knowing where he was going until the massy battlements of King Pellam's castle appeared.
"Why do you wear the crown royal on your shield?" Pellam's men asked him as soon as they saw him.
"The fairest and best of ladies living gave it to me," Balin replied, as he stalled his horse and strode across the court to the banquet hall.
"Why do you wear the royal crown?" Sir Garlon asked him as they sat at table.
"The queen whom Lancelot and we all worship as the fairest, best and purest gave it to me to wear," said Balin.
But Sir Garlon only hissed at him and made fun of what he said, and Balin reached for a wonderful goblet embossed with a sacred picture to hurl it at Garlon, but the thought of the gentle queen about whom he was talking soothed his temper. The next morning, however, in the court Sir Garlon mocked him again and Balin's face grew black with anger. He tore out his sword from its shield and crying out fiercely, "Ha! I'll make a ghost of you!" struck Garlon hard on the helmet.
The blade flew and splintered into six parts which clinked upon the stones below while Garlon reeled slowly backward and fell. Balin dragged him by the banneret of his helmet and struck again, but in a minute twenty warriors with pointed lances were making for him from the castle. Balin dashed his fist against the foremost face then dipped through a low doorway out along a glimmering gallery until he saw the open portals of King Pellam's chapel. He slipped inside this and crept behind the door while the others howled past outside.
Before the golden altar he noticed lying the brightest lance he had ever seen with its point painted red with blood. Seizing it he pushed it out through an open casement, leaned on it and leaped in a half-circle to the ground outside. Running along a path he found his horse, mounted him and scudded away. An arrow whizzed to his right, another to his left and a third over his head while he heard Pellam crying out feebly, "Catch him, catch him! he mustn't pollute holy things!"
But Balin quickly dove beneath the tree boughs and raced through miles of thick groves and open meadowland until his good horse, at last wearied and uncertain in his footsteps, stumbled over a fallen oak and threw Balin headlong.
As Balin rose to his feet he looked at the Queen's crown on his shield and then drew the shield from off his neck. "I have shamed you," he cried. "I won't carry you any more," and he hung it up on a branch and threw himself on the ground in a passionate sleep.