Tales from Tennyson

[Illustration: CUNNING MODRED BESIDE THE DOOR TO LISTEN]

"What should I know about it? For my mother's hair and eyes were dark, and so were the eyes and hair of Gerlois, and Uther was dark too, almost black, but the King Arthur is fairer than anyone else in Britain. However, I remember how my mother used often to weep and say, 'O that you had some brother, pretty little one, to guard you from the rough ways of the world."

"Yes? She said that?" Leodogran rejoined, "but when did you see Arthur first?"

"O king, I will tell you all about it," cried the Queen of Orkney. "Once when I was a little bit of a girl and had been beaten for some childish fault that I had not committed, I ran outside and flung myself on a grassy bank and hated all the world and everything in it, and wi