“I feared your request would be that,” he said. “Since I promised you on my honor, I must tell the story, but no other living man has heard it.”
The Sorrowful Knight had dinner served for his guests with a flickering candle for light. Most people would have had a small appetite in such gloomy surroundings, but Dermot and his friends were hungry enough to forget about it. They did full justice to the meal. When each had satisfied his hunger the knight began:
“It was twenty-one years ago that the sorrow came to me. I lived in this castle as happily as any man of the kingdom. Anyone would have been proud of the twelve handsome young men I called my sons. Every place I went my boys were with me.
“On the morning of the first of May it was our custom to hunt the deer together. Of course, we hunted on many days of the spring, but the May day was always our first deer hunt. On the morning of which I speak we started up a deer without horns and gave chase.
“It was a fleeter animal than any we had ever followed before. All day long we kept after her until toward evening we saw her disappear into a cave. We thought we had her trapped and followed swiftly. Imagine our surprise when we found ourselves not in a cave at all, but in a new country, at the gate of a large castle.
“The deer was nowhere in sight. We were too far from home to return that night, so we decided to ask for shelter from the lord of the castle. This was readily granted.
“We were taken into a big banquet hall. Along one side of the room, over huge fires, were twelve kettles of scalding water. In front of each kettle was the carcass of a wild boar. The master of the castle apologized for not having supper cooked and asked if any of us could prepare the boars for roasting. We said we could and set to work.
“But, though we dipped the animals in the scalding water, we could not remove a single bristle. The scalding seemed to make them stick more tightly. We could do nothing toward preparing the meat for supper.
“Then the master called in a small servant and told him to get the animals ready. This man lined up the twelve boars, blew upon them through a small tube, and instantly every bristle disappeared. I knew then that we were in the land of enchantment.
“We had all that we could eat, and after the meal the lord of the castle asked me if my sons would be willing to show their strength for our amusement. I told him they would. He ordered in twelve small men with a long chain and bade my sons pull it away from them. This seemed like an easy task. But when my sons took hold of the chain they could not move the small men an inch. Soon the small men pulled my sons toward them with a quick jerk and threw the slackened part about the necks of my boys. The instant the chain touched my sons they became twelve stones.”