promise to pay, and that again with another in infinite series,
they would not, as their wiser posterity has done,
take those tenders for true pay which were not sterling;
so that, one fine morning, the knight found himself sitting
on a pleasant bank of the Trent, with only a solitary squire,
who still clung to the shadow of preferment, because he did
not see at the moment any better chance of the substance.

The knight did not despair because of the desertion of his followers:
he was well aware that he could easily raise recruits if he could
once find trace of his game; he, therefore, rode about indefatigably
over hill and dale, to the great sharpening of his own appetite
and that of his squire, living gallantly from inn to inn when
his purse was full, and quartering himself in the king's name
on the nearest ghostly brotherhood when it happened to be empty.
An autumn and a winter had passed away, when the course of his
perlustations brought him one evening into a beautiful sylvan valley,
where he found a number of young women weaving garlands of flowers,
and singing over their pleasant occupation. He approached them,
and courteously inquired the way to the nearest town.

"There is no town within several miles," was the answer.

"A village, then, if it be but large enough to furnish an inn?"

"There is Gamwell just by, but there is no inn nearer than the nearest town."

"An abbey, then?"

"There is no abbey nearer than the nearest inn."