Then the King called thrice clearly: 

“Will any man rise in accusation against Tristan?”

And as none replied, he said to his chaplain: 

“Write me a writ in haste.  You have heard what you shall write.  Iseult has suffered enough in her youth.  And let the writ be hung upon the arm of the red cross before evening.  Write speedily.”

Towards midnight Tristan crossed the Heath of Sand, and found the writ, and bore it sealed to Ogrin; and the hermit read the letter; “How Mark consented by the counsel of his barons to take back Iseult, but not to keep Tristan for his liege.  Rather let him cross the sea, when, on the third day hence, at the Ford of Chances, he had given back the Queen into King Mark’s hands.”  Then Tristan said to the Queen: 

“O, my God!  I must lose you, friend!  But it must be, since I can thus spare you what you suffer for my sake.  But when we part for ever I will give you a pledge of mine to keep, and from whatever unknown land I reach I will send some messenger, and he will bring back word of you, and at your call I will come from far away.”

Iseult said, sighing: 

“Tristan, leave me your dog, Toothold, and every time I see him I will remember you, and will be less sad.  And, friend, I have here a ring of green jasper.  Take it for the love of me, and put it on your finger; then if anyone come saying he is from you, I will not trust him at all till he show me this ring, but once I have seen it, there is no power or royal ban that can prevent me from doing what you bid—­wisdom or folly.”

“Friend,” he said, “here give I you Toothold.”

“Friend,” she replied, “take you this ring in reward.”

And they kissed each other on the lips.

Now Ogrin, having left the lovers in the Hermitage, hobbled upon his crutch to the place called The Mount, and he bought ermine there and fur and cloth of silk and purple and scarlet, and a palfrey harnessed in gold that went softly, and the folk laughed to see him spending upon these the small moneys he had amassed so long; but the old man put the rich stuffs upon the palfrey and came back to Iseult.

And “Queen,” said he, “take these gifts of mine that you may seem the finer on the day when you come to the Ford.”

Meanwhile the King had had cried through Cornwall the news that on the third day he would make his peace with the Queen at the Ford, and knights and ladies came in a crowd to the gathering, for all loved the Queen and would see her, save the three felons that yet survived.

On the day chosen for the meeting, the field shone far with the rich tents of the barons, and suddenly Tristan and Iseult came out at the forest’s edge, and caught sight of King Mark far off among his Barony: 

“Friend,” said Tristan, “there is the King, your lord—­his knights and his men; they are coming towards us, and very soon we may not speak to each other again.  By the God of Power I conjure you, if ever I send you a word, do you my bidding.”