Gareth was a little prince. His home was an old grey castle, and there were great mountains all round the castle. Gareth loved these mountains and his beautiful home at the foot of them. He had lived there all his life.
Gareth had no little boys or girls to play with, for there were no houses near his mountain home.
But Gareth was happy all day long. Sometimes in the bright summer mornings the streams would call to him. Then he would follow them up the mountains, till he found the place where the streams ended in tiny silver threads.
Sometimes the birds and beasts, his woodland friends, would call to him, and then Gareth would wander about in the forest with them till evening came. Then he would tell his mother the wonderful things he had seen, and the wonderful things he had heard in the forests and on the mountain-sides.
Gareth’s mother, the Queen of Orkney, loved the little prince so much that she was never dull. She had no one to talk to except her little son, for her husband was old, so old that he could not talk to his Queen. And if she talked to him, he was almost too deaf to hear what she said.
But though the Queen was never dull, she was sometimes unhappy. She was afraid that some day, when Gareth was older, he would want to leave her to go into the world, perhaps to go to the great King Arthur’s court, as his three brothers had done.
Now Gareth had already heard stories about the brave deeds of King Arthur’s knights. He knew that they were strong men, and that they fought for the weak people, and that they often had great adventures, when they were sent to punish the King’s enemies. And Gareth longed to be a man, for ‘when I am a man, I will be one of Arthur’s knights, too,’ he thought.
