When he went home, all his tale would be of the grief and joy of the parents; while to me, who had looked on, the gracious countenance of the armed man, beaming from the panoply of steel, over the seemingly dead child, while the powerful hands turned it and shifted it, and bound it, if possible even more gently than the mother's, formed the centre of the story.
After we had partaken of the best they could give us, the knight took his leave, with a few parting instructions to the mother as to how she should treat the child.
I brought the knight his steed, held the stirrup while he mounted, and then followed him through the wood.

The horse, delighted to be free of his hideous load, bounded beneath the weight of man and armour, and could hardly be restrained from galloping on.

But the knight made him time his powers to mine, and so we went on for an hour or two.

Then the knight dismounted, and compelled me to get into the saddle, saying: "Knight and squire must share the labour." Holding by the stirrup, he walked along by my side, heavily clad as he was, with apparent ease.

As we went, he led a conversation, in which I took what humble part my sense of my condition would permit me.
"Somehow or other," said he, "notwithstanding the beauty of this country of Faerie, in which we are, there is much that is wrong in it.