. However, of course the Scoffer
didn't laugh - I mean the boy. No, he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't
scoff at. He said the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were
petrified. I said »petrified« was good; as I believed, myself, that the only
right way to classify the majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic
periods. But that neat idea hit the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't
been invented yet. He failed to catch on. However, I made a note of the remark,
and calculated to educate the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is
no use to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet.
    Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill, with me for
fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kay told how he had
encountered me in a far land of barbarians who all wore the same ridiculous garb
that I did - a garb that was a work of enchantment and intended to make the
wearer secure from hurt by human hands. However, he had nullified the force of
the enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in a three-hours'
battle and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so strange a
curiosity as I was might be exhibited to the wonder and admiration of the king
and the court. He spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as this
prodigious giant, and this horrible sky-towering monster, and this tushed and
taloned man-devouring ogre; and everybody took in all this bosh in the naivest
way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that there was any discrepancy between
these watered statistics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him I
sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he
dislodged me with a stone the size of a cow, which all-to brast the most of my
bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for sentence. He ended by
condemning me to die at noon on the 21st; and was to little concerned about it
that he stopped to yawn before he named the date.
    I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough in my
right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as to how I had better be
killed, the possibility of the
