four destriers, and four hackneys, and four squires withal.
So they came and stood before their father, waiting for his word,
and wondering what it would be.

Now spake King Peter: "Fair sons, ye would go on all adventure to seek
a wider land, and a more stirring life than ye may get of me at home:
so be it! But I have bethought me, that, since I am growing old
and past the age of getting children, one of you, my sons, must abide
at home to cherish me and your mother, and to lead our carles in war
if trouble falleth upon us. Now I know not how to choose by mine own
wit which of you shall ride and which abide. For so it is that ye are
diverse of your conditions; but the evil conditions which one of you
lacks the other hath, and the valiancy which one hath, the other lacks.
Blaise is wise and prudent, but no great man of his hands.
Hugh is a stout rider and lifter, but headstrong and foolhardy,
and over bounteous a skinker; and Gregory is courteous and many worded,
but sluggish in deed; though I will not call him a dastard. As for Ralph,
he is fair to look on, and peradventure he may be as wise as Blaise,
as valiant as Hugh, and as smooth-tongued as Gregory; but of all this
we know little or nothing, whereas he is but young and untried.
Yet may he do better than you others, and I deem that he will do so.
All things considered, then, I say, I know not how to choose between you,
my sons; so let luck choose for me, and ye shall draw cuts for your roads;
and he that draweth longest shall go north, and the next longest shall
go east, and the third straw shall send the drawer west; but as to him
who draweth the shortest cut, he shall go no whither but back again
to my house, there to abide with me the chances and changes of life;
and it is most like that this one shall sit in my chair when I am gone,
and be called King of Upmeads.