But he was too manly to kill anyone in sleep, so he just laid his sword across their throats and passed out to his horse, crushed his saddle with his thighs, clenched his hands together and groaned.
"I loathe her now just as much as I loved her!" he cried, and dashing his spurs into his horse he bounded out into the darkness and never came back.
Meanwhile Ettarre, feeling the cold sword on her neck, awoke.
"Liar!" she cried to Gawain, as she saw that it was the sword of Pelleas, "you haven't killed Pelleas, for he's been here and could have killed us both just now."
And ever after that, as those who tell the story say, the proud and scornful Ettarre sighed for Pelleas, the one true knight in the world, her only faithful lover, and at last pined away because he never came back.
THE LAST TOURNAMENT.
One day while King Arthur and Sir Lancelot were riding far, far beneath a winding wall of rock they heard the wail of a child.
A half-dead oak tree climbed up the sides of the rock and up in mid-air it held an eagle's nest. Through its branches rushed a rainy wind and through the wind came the voice of a little child. Lancelot sprang up the crag and from the nest at the tree-top he brought down a baby girl. Round her neck was twined a necklace of rubies, wound round and round three times.
Arthur took the baby and gave it to Queen Guinevere, who soon loved it very tenderly and named her "Nestling." But Nestling had caught a terrible cold in her strange little home in the wild eagle's nest and died. And after that whenever the Queen looked at the ruby necklace it made her very sad so she gave it to Arthur and said: