"Sir," say they to Lancelot, "Greatly ought we to love you, yea, better
than all knights in the world beside. For we are the two damsels,
sisters, that you saw so poor at the Waste Castle where you lay in our
brother's house. You and Messire Gawain and another knight gave us the
treasure and the hold of the robber-knights that you slew; for this
city which is waste and the Waste Castle of my brother would never
again be peopled of folk, nor should we never have had the land again,
save a knight had come hither as loyal as are you. Full a score
knights have arrived here by chance in the same manner as you came, and
not one of them but hath slain a brother or a kinsman and cut off his
head as you did to the knight, and each one promised to return at the
day appointed; but all failed of their covenant, for not one of them
durst come to the day; and so you had failed us in like manner as the
others, we should have lost this city without recovery and the castles
that are its appanages."