and he deserved such honour too, for to all and sundry he was ever
generous. His table stood in the hall all day, perpetually supplied
with the best of meat and drink, and any man was welcome to dine
there. Fish, flesh and bread abounded in his house, besides all the
special dainties which the varying seasons brought. His mews were
stocked with many a fat partridge, and his streams with bream and
trout. He was greatly interested in the Squire, and full of
admiration for his modest, gentlemanly bearing. "I have a son
myself," he said, "but he does me no credit. All he cares for is to
play at dice and gossip with page-boys. I would he were as fine a
youth as you, Sir Squire. Do what I will, I cannot teach him
gentleness and manners!" "Fie on such talk!" interrupted our Host.
"You remember our plan, good Franklin? Come, tell us your story now."
"Well I remember my promise," the Franklin answered, "and I gladly
fulfil it now.

"In the old days the ancient Britons invented and sang to the harp
many songs of chivalrous adventure. There is one that I remember
which I will tell as well as I can. But at the beginning I ask you
to pardon the roughness of my speech. I am a common man and cannot
talk as do the nobility. I never learnt rhetoric nor read my
classics, and as for the flowers of speech, as they call them, I
have none. The only flowers I know are those that grow in the
meadows. Still, as I can, I will tell."



THE FRANKLIN'S TALE OF THREE GENEROUS SOULS

In Armorica, the country we now call Brittany, there lived a knight