Sir Percival seemed to have settled down to inconvenience and (I must own) grotesque appearance due to his having children fore and aft of him on the saddle, and he was quite ready to talk about himself. He was out looking for adventures because he had become enamoured of a young lady, and she had told him that if he would go forth as a knight-errant for one year and conquer a reasonable number of knights and caitiffs and slay some dragons and the like, she would have something to say to him, but she did not say what. So far he had not conquered anybody because he hadn’t met anybody who would fight, and as for dragons he really believed they had all left the country. One man, a miller, had told him where there was a dragon, but it turned out that the ribald fellow meant his own wife, who used to go for him with ferocity, and probably with plenty of reason. But he told them he had now great hopes, for he was on his way to a castle he had heard about as being likely—though he didn’t know whose it was—for in a castle there were always knights, and knights were always spoiling for a fight. This was very good news to Gorbo because he worked it out that in a castle there was always something to eat, and the children were delighted when he told them this, for the sun was now getting high and they had had nothing to eat since last night’s turnips.
In time they came to nice wooded country, which was a pleasant change from the rather bare plain. Then they caught sight of battlemented towers peeping above the tree-tops, and a little later they halted by the outer wall of a small cosy castle, all alone by itself. There seemed to be nobody about, inside or outside, and everything was very peaceful and sunny and still. And hanging on the outer gate was a slug-horn like the one outside the Dark Tower that Childe Roland came to.