At length came a day when Lancelot felt so much stronger, through the healing influence of a bath of herbs which the hermit had gathered in the woods, that he determined to try if he could wear his armor and sit in his saddle. He thereupon armed and had his horse brought out. Mounting the mettled charger, in the high spirit of new health he spurred it to full speed.
But the courser's long rest in the stable had made it fresh and fierce, and on feeling the spurs it leaped forward so violently that Lancelot's wound burst open in the strain, and the blood gushed out again.
"Bors! Lavaine! help!" he feebly cried. "I am come to my end."
As he spoke he fell from his horse to the earth, and lay there like a corpse.
The two knights hurried up, full of fearful concern, and when Elaine, who had heard the pitiful call, came flying to the spot, she threw herself on the prostrate form, weeping like one beside herself with grief, and kissing the insensible knight as if she hoped thus to recall him to life.
"Traitors you are!" she cried wildly to her brother and Sir Bors. "Why did you let him leave his bed? I hold you guilty of his death."
At this moment the hermit Baldwin appeared. When he saw Lancelot in that plight he grew angry at heart, though he checked the reproachful words that rose to his lips.
"Let us have him in," he said, briefly.
Lancelot was thereupon carried to the hermitage, his armor removed, and the bleeding stanched, but it was long before he could be brought out of his death-like swoon.
"Why did you put your life thus in jeopardy?" asked the hermit, reproachfully, when the knight was again in his senses.