round his arms instead of gauntlets. So prepared he rushed on the lions
when they were let loose upon him, and thrusting his arms down their
throats choked them, and thereinafter tearing out their very hearts,
held them up in triumph to the gaolers who stood by trembling with fear.

After this the King of Persia gave up the hopes of putting St. George to
death, and, doubling the bars of the dungeon, left him to languish
therein. And there the unhappy Knight remained for seven long years, his
thoughts full of his lost Princess; his only companions rats and mice
and creeping worms, his only food and drink bread made of the coarsest
bran and dirty water.

At last one day, in a dark corner of his dungeon, he found one of the
iron staples he had drawn in his rage and fury. It was half consumed
with rust, yet it was sufficient in his hands to open a passage through
the walls of his cell into the King's garden. It was the time of night
when all things are silent; but St. George, listening, heard the voices
of grooms in the stables; which, entering, he found two grooms
furnishing forth a horse against some business. Whereupon, taking the
staple with which he had redeemed himself from prison, he slew the
grooms, and mounting the palfrey rode boldly to the city gates, where he
told the watchman at the Bronze Tower that St. George having escaped
from the dungeon, he was in hot pursuit of him. Whereupon the gates were
thrown open, and St. George, clapping spurs to his horse, found himself
safe from pursuit before the first red beams of the sun shot up into the
sky.

Now, ere long, being most famished with hunger, he saw a tower set on a
high cliff, and riding thitherward determined to ask for food. But as he
neared the castle he saw a beauteous damsel in a blue and gold robe