Then the queen departed, but do what she would the brachet would not follow her, but kept with the sick knight. Soon afterwards King Mark visited him, and to his surprise the brachet sat upon the prostrate man and bayed at the king.
"What does this mean?" he asked.
"I can tell you," answered a knight. "That dog was Sir Tristram's before it was the queen's. The brachet is wiser than us all. It knows its master."
"That I cannot believe," said the king. "Tell me your name, my good man."
"My name is Tristram of Lyonesse," answered the knight. "I am in your power. Do with me what you will."
The king looked at him long and strangely, with anger in his eyes.
"Truly," he said, "you had better have died while you were about it. It would have saved me the need of dealing with you as you deserve."
Then he returned to the castle, and called his barons hastily to council, sternly demanding that the penalty of death should be adjudged against the knight. Happily for Tristram, the barons would not consent to this, and proposed instead that the accused knight should be banished.
So in the end the sentence was passed that Tristram should be banished for ten years from the country of Cornwall, not to return under pain of death. To this the knight assented, taking an oath before the king and his barons that he would abide by the decision of the court.
Many barons accompanied him to the ship in which he was to set sail. And as he was going, there arrived at Tintagil a knight of King Arthur's court named Dinadan, who had been sent to seek Sir Tristram and request him to come to Camelot.