We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when I rose next morning and looked abroad, I was ware where a knight came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him for knight of mine—Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in the gentlemen’s furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was plug hats. He was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armor of the time—up to where his helmet ought to have been; but he hadn’t any helmet, he wore a shiny stovepipe hat, and was ridiculous a spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of my surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it grotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana’s saddle was hung about with leather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knight he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and made him wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir Ozana and get his news.
“How is trade?” I asked.
“Ye will note that I have but these four left; yet were they sixteen whenas I got me from Camelot.”
“Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Ozana. Where have you been foraging of late?”
“I am but now come from the Valley of Holiness, please you sir.”
“I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirring in the monkery, more than common?”
“By the mass ye may not question it! … Give him good feed, boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightly to the stable and do even as I bid. … Sir, it is parlous news I bring, and—be these pilgrims? Then ye may not do better, good folk, than gather and hear the tale I