them down to table; but Fleur, marking that his servant had served him with the cup that was Blanchefleur's price, was so pierced to the heart with sorrow at the sight that the tears streamed from his eyes, and Lycoris, the hostess, in pity for his pain, said to her husband Daries, 'Quick, sir! let us clear the table, for this young man seeks other support than food.'

   So, when the table was cleared, Daries desired his guest to declare his grief, if so be that help for it might be found in counsel. But said Lycoris again: 'Sir, so far as I can judge by his mien and bearing, I deem that this youth grieves for the maiden Blanchefleur, who, now shut up in the Admiral's high tower, spent two weeks with us in grievous sorrow of heart, bewailing her sad fate in being thus sold away far from the youth she loved, and for whose sake she shed many a tear and heaved many a sigh; and, as you may remember, sir, on leaving us this Blanchefleur was bought by the Admiral for ten times her weight in gold. Now, to my thinking, this youth is brother or lover to the maiden Blanchefleur.'

   'No brother but her lover am I!' cried Fleur in glad surprise; then bethinking him how by such heedless speech his life was

   put in peril, he cried again: 'No! no! I don't mean that; I am brother and not lover to Blanchefleur. We are children of the same parents.'

   'With all respect for your word, young sir, you contradict yourself in one breath,' said Daries the host. 'Best speak the truth out plainly as, forsooth, I now do in declaring that it were madness to come in quest of the maiden Blanchefleur; for, if the Admiral but hears of you, you are a dead man.'

   'Sir,' said Fleur, 'hear the whole truth—I am son to the King of Spain, and seek my stolen Blanchefleur, without whom I cannot live; help me to her, and I will give you gold to your heart's

   content, for ere another moon has waxed and waned, find her I must or die.'

   'Life,' replied Daries, 'were ill lost for sake of a maiden, whom no aid of mine can make your own, seeing that not, were the whole world to help you, could Blanchefleur be taken from the Admiral, Lord of a hundred kings, whose city Babylon is a four-square of twenty miles, and has for its defence walls full seventy feet in height, built of a stone so hard that no engine of war from enemies without can pierce their stony front, and in these walls are three-and-thirty doors of solid steel let in with cunning art, and high uplifted are seven hundred towers, the 

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