dwarf, dark-brown of hue and hideous, with long arms and ears
exceeding great and dog-teeth that stuck out like the fangs of a
wild beast. He was clad in a rich coat of yellow silk, and bare in
his hand a crooked bow, and was girt with a broad sax.

After him came a maiden, young by seeming, of scarce twenty summers;
fair of face as a flower; grey-eyed, brown-haired, with lips full
and red, slim and gentle of body. Simple was her array, of a short
and strait green gown, so that on her right ankle was clear to see
an iron ring.

Last of the three was a lady, tall and stately, so radiant of visage
and glorious of raiment, that it were hard to say what like she was;
for scarce might the eye gaze steady upon her exceeding beauty; yet
must every son of Adam who found himself anigh her, lift up his eyes
again after he had dropped them, and look again on her, and yet
again and yet again. Even so did Walter, and as the three passed by
him, it seemed to him as if all the other folk there about had
vanished and were nought; nor had he any vision before his eyes of
any looking on them, save himself alone. They went over the gangway
into the ship, and he saw them go along the deck till they came to
the house on the poop, and entered it and were gone from his sight.

There he stood staring, till little by little the thronging people
of the quays came into his eye-shot again; then he saw how the
hawser was cast off and the boats fell to tugging the big ship
toward the harbour-mouth with hale and how of men. Then the sail
fell down from the yard and was sheeted home and filled with the
fair wind as the ship's bows ran up on the first green wave outside
the haven. Even therewith the shipmen cast abroad a banner, whereon