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for Merlin, he hath provided or will furnish the means for this, for being an honest knight thou art poor and with now still another mouth to feed.”
    “Do not speak of that which is beyond thine understanding, old woman,” said Sir Hector, who himself was seven-and-fifty while his wife was eighteen, but such was the routine style of address in bucolic Wales.
    Therefore Arthur was not reared in luxury, but ate good Welsh leeks throughout his childhood, with only the odd sausage and that largely of meal and not meat, and his garb was the coarse stuffs woven by his foster-mother on her loom. Of footgear he had nothing in summer but rawhide soles secured to his ankles with thongs; in the cruel Welsh winters strips of old blanketing were wrapped up to the knee. His bed was a pallet, the straw of which was home to multitudinous bugs in all seasons, and in cold weather he was constrained to share the palliasse with the hounds, who had a great fondness for him whereas they did spurn his foster-brother Kay, who at an early age acquired a disdainful manner that was at odds with his gifts at that time, the which were not of note in any wise, while Arthur was easily excellent at all he essayed. At riding, archery, spear-play, and swordsmanship his proficiency was exceeded only by his modesty and magnanimity, for he would defer to Kay and often would misrepresent the results of their contests in favor of his brother.
    As when after shooting their arrows at a mark he would examine the target, saving Kay the displeasure of wading through the mud, and announce that his brother had as usual been more accurate than he (though his own arrow had split the center of the stave while Kay’s had caught in the bark at the periphery: which Kay could see quite clearly, and therefore he did despise Arthur for pretending to be worse when he was better).
    And oftentimes at table, when Olwen, who Arthur assumed was his natural mother, gave him a larger portion of food than she served to Kay (which she did regularly if for no other reason than that Arthur ate robustly of whatever was offered, whereas Kay did toy with his plate and curl his lip; and if Sir Hector saw this he would cuff him to the floor, for that good knight lived by manly British principles), Arthur might well try surreptitiously to exchange his greater quantity with the lesser plate of Kay, thus earning his brother’s despite once again, for leeks were an abomination to Kay, who was in that, as in much else, an unusual Briton and more suited by nature to the menus of Rome, of which he had not yet had experience.
    And the brothers therefore had no special affinity, Arthur having (though he did believe Hector and Olwen to be his natural parents) an essential sense of his own superiority of mind, heart, and body, not only to Kay but to all others; while Kay thought of Arthur as being all in all a bore, but in no case did he hate him, for Kay himself did not at that time aspire to be a warrior and indeed would never have picked up sword or lance had Hector been capable of envisioning another career for his sons than that of knight.
    Now during Arthur’s childhood Merlin did not appear in that part of Wales though he spent much time at the spring of Alaban, which was not far distant, refining his conception of the Golden Reign to come. On the occasions when a human being came into his vicinity, which were rare, because the spring was deep within an enchanted wood and could never be found except by accident, the magician would take on the guise of some beast or tree so as not to be disturbed by pointless conversation. But if a dragon came there to drink, Merlin would transform it into a timorous scampering little newt.
    Now Uther Pendragon fought many wars against the Picts and the Scots and invaders from other countries, the Irish, the Danes, the Frisians, and the Angles and Saxons, and the Romans did attempt from time to time to take back the realm they had relinquished owing to their