"'The king!' cried Merlin. 'Here's an heir for Uther.'
"Then as old Merlin spoke the fringe of that terrible great flaming breaker lashed at him as he held up the baby; it rose up round him in a mantle of fire so that he and the child were clothed in fire. Then suddenly there was a calm, the stars looked out and the sky was open.
"'And this same child,' Bleys whispered to me, 'is the young king who reigns. And I could not die in peace unless the story had been told.' Then Bleys passed away into the land where nobody can question him.
"So I came to Merlin to ask him whether that was all true about the shining dragon-ship and the tiny bare baby floating down from heaven over on the glory of the seas; but Merlin just laughed, as he always does, and answered me in the riddles of the old song, this way:
"'Rain, rain and sun! a rainbow in the sky!
A young man will be wiser by and by;
An old man's wit may wander ere he die.
Rain, rain and sun! a rainbow on the lea!
And truth is this to me and that to thee;
And truth or clothed or naked let it be.
Rain, sun and rain! and the free blossom blows;
Sun, rain and sun! and where is he who knows.
From the great deep to the great deep he goes!'
"It vexed me dreadfully to have Merlin be so tantalizing; but you must not be afraid, king, to give your only child Guinevere to this King Arthur. For great poets will sing of his brave deeds in long years after this; and Merlin has said, and not joking, either, that even although Arthur's enemies may wound him in battle he will never, never die, but will only pass away for a time, for a little while, and then will come to us again. And Merlin says too, that sometime Arthur is going to trample all the heathen kings under his feet until all the nations and all the men will call him their king."
It pleased Leodogran tremendously to hear what the Queen of Orkney told him of Arthur, and when she had ended he lay thinking over it all, still puzzled as to whether he should say "yes" or "no" to the ambassadors whom Arthur had sent. As he lay buried in his thoughts he grew very, very drowsy and dreamy, and at last, he fell asleep. And while he slept he saw a wonderful vision in a dream.
There was a strange, sloping land, rising before his eyes, that ascended higher and higher, field after field, to a very great height and at the top there was a lofty peak hidden in the heavy, hazy clouds; and on the peak a phantom king stood. One moment the king was there, and the next moment he was gone, while everything below him was in a frightful confusion, a battle with swords, and the flocks of sheep and cattle falling back, and all the villages burning and their smoke rolling up in streams to the clouded pinnacle of the peak where the king stood in the fog, hiding him the more. Now and then the king spoke out through the haze, and some one here or there beneath would point upward toward him, but the rest all went on fighting. They cried out, "He is no king of ours, no son of Uther's, no king of ours." Then in a twinkling the dream all changed; the mists had quite blown away, the solid earth below the peak had vanished like a bubble and only the wonderful king remained, crowned with his diadems, standing in the heavens.
Then Leodogran while still looking at him woke from his sleep. He called for Ulfius and Brastias and Bedevere, and when they had come into this presence he told them that Arthur should marry the fair Princess Guinevere, and he sent them galloping back to Arthur's court.
That was a joyful day for King Arthur when the three knights delivered King Leodogran's message. He made ready at once for his sweet queen. He picked out Lancelot, his favorite Knight of the Round Table, whom he loved better than any other man in all the world, to ride over into the Land of Cameliard and bring back Guinevere for his bride. And as Lancelot mounted his dancing steed and rode away Arthur watched him from the palace gates, thinking of the lovely lady who would ride by his side when he returned.