helmet flew over my head, and I sitting still there, swung out,
hitting him on the neck; his head flew right off, for the mail no more
held than a piece of silk. "Mary rings," and my horse whinnied again,
and we both of us went at it, and fairly stopped that rout, so that
there was a knot of quite close and desperate fighting, wherein we had
the best of that fight and slew most of them, albeit my horse was
slain and my mail-coif cut through. Then I bade a squire fetch me
another horse, and began meanwhile to upbraid those knights for
running in such a strange disorderly race, instead of standing and
fighting cleverly. Moreover we had drifted even in this successful
fight still nearer to the pass, so that the conies who dwelt there
were beginning to consider whether they should not run into their
holes.

But one of those knights said: "Be not angry with me. Sir Florian, but
do you think you will go to Heaven?"

"The saints! I hope so," I said, but one who stood near him whispered
to him to hold his peace, so I cried out: "0 friend! I hold this world
and all therein so cheap now, that I see not anything in it but shame
which can any longer anger me; wherefore speak: out."

"Then, Sir Florian, men say that at your christening some fiend took
on him the likeness of a priest and strove to baptize you in the
Devil's name, but God had mercy on you so that the fiend could not
choose but baptize you in the name of the most holy Trinity: and yet
men say that you hardly believe any doctrine such as other men do, and
will at the end only go to Heaven round about as it were, not at all
by the intercession of our Lady; they say too that you can see no
ghosts or other wonders, whatever happens to other Christian men."