away the “assay” or fat; and rend off the hide. When all is ready, they feed the hounds, and then they make for home.

Anon Sir Gawayne hearing them approach the castle, goes out to meet his host. Then the lord commands all his household to assemble, and the venison to be brought before him; he calls Gawayne, and asks him whether he does not deserve much praise for his success in the chase. When the knight has said that fairer venison he has not seen in winter—nay, not this seven year—his host doth bid him take the whole, according to the agreement between them made last night. Gawayne gives the knight a comely kiss in return, and his host desires to know if he too has gotten much weal at home?

“Nay,” says Sir Gawayne, “ask me no more of that!”

Thereupon the lord of the castle laughed, and they went to supper, where were dainties new, enough and to spare. Anon they were sitting by the hearth, while wine is carried round, and again Sir Gawayne and his host renew their compact, as before, and so they take leave of each other and hasten to bed.

Scarce had the cock cackled thrice on the morrow, when the lord was up, and again with his hunters and horns out and abroad, pursuing the chase. The hunters cheer on the hounds, which fall to the scent, forty at once; all come together by the side of a cliff, and look about on all sides, beating the bushes. Out there rushes a fierce wild boar, who fells three to the ground with the first thrust. Full quickly the hunters pursue him; however, he attacks the hounds, causing them to yowl and yell. The bowmen send their arrows after this wild beast, but they glide off, shivered in pieces. Enraged with the blows, he attacks the hunters: then the lord of the land blows his bugle, and pursues the boar.

All this time Sir Gawayne lies abed, as on the previous day, according to his promise. And again, when he is summoned out of his late slumbers, the lady of the castle twits him with his lack of courtesy.

“Sir,” says she, “if ye indeed be Sir Gawayne methinkest you would not have forgotten that which yesterday I taught!”

“What is that?” quoth he.

“That I taught you of giving,” says she; “yet, you give not the ring as courtesy requires.”

“Poor is the gift,” he says, “that is not given of free will!”

But then the lady takes a ring from her own finger, and bids him to keep it. “And I would hear from you,” she says, “some stories of beautiful dames, and of feats of arms and the deeds that become true knights.”

Sir Gawayne says he has no sleight in the telling of such tales, and he may not take the ring she would give him, but he would for ever be her servant.

Meanwhile, the lord pursued the wild boar, that bit the backs of his hounds asunder, and caused the stoutest of his hunters to start back. At last the beast was too exhausted to run any more and entered a hole in a rock, by the side of a brook, the froth foaming at his mouth. None durst approach him, so many had he torn with his tusks. The knight, seeing the boar at bay, alights from his horse, and seeks to attack him with his sword; the boar rushes out upon the man, who, aiming well, wounds him in the side, and the wild beast is killed by the hounds.

Then was there blowing of horns and baying of hounds. One, wise in wood-craft, begins to unlace the boar, and hews off the head. Then he feeds his hounds; and the two halves of the carcase are next bound together and hung upon a pole. The boar’s head is now borne before the lord of the castle, who hastens home.

Gawayne is called upon, when the hunt returns, to receive the spoil, and the lord of the land is well pleased when he sees him; and shows him the wild boar, and tells him of its length and breadth. “Such