Gateman:  Here is his cap for you, anyway, and his cleaver and his bunch of skivers.  For the champion you are crying was no other than that lad of a cook!

Queen:  That is not true!  It is not possible!

Gateman:  Sure I seen him myself going out the gate a while ago.  He put off his cook’s apparel and threw it along with these behind the turfstack.  I gathered them up presently and I coming in the door.

King:  The world is gone beyond me entirely!  But what I was saying all through, there was something beyond the common in that boy!

Queen:  (To Princess, who is clinging to chair.) Let you be comforted now, knowing he cannot come back to lay claim to you in marriage, as it is likely he would, and he living.

Princess:  It is he saved me after my unkindness!...  Oh, I am ashamed ...ashamed!

Queen:  It is a queer thing a king’s daughter to be crying after a man used to twisting the spit in place of weapons, and over skivers in the place of a sword!

Princess:  (Gropes and totters.) What has happened?  There is something gone astray!  I have no respect for myself....  I cannot live!  I am ashamed.  Where is Nurse?  Muime!  Come to me, Muime!...My grief!  The man that died for me, whether he is of the noble or the simple of the world, it is to him I have given the love of my soul!

(Dall Glic supports her and lays her on window seat.)

Nurse:  (Rushing in.) What is it, honey?  What at all are they after doing to you?

Queen:  Throw over her a skillet of water.  She is gone into a faint.

Dall Glic:  (Who is bending over her.) She is in no faint.  She is gone out.

Nurse:  Oh, my child and my darling!  What call had I to leave you among them at all?

King:  Raise her up.  It is impossible she can be gone.

Dall Glic:  Gone out and spent, as sudden as a candle in a blast of wind.

King:  Who would think grief would do away with her so sudden, there to be seven of the like of him dead?

Nurse:  (Rises.) What did you do to her at all, at all?  Or was it through the fright and terror of the beast?

Queen:  She died of the heartbreak, being told that the strange champion that had put down the Dragon was killed dead.

Nurse:  Killed, is it?  Who now put that lie out of his mouth? (Shouts in her ear.) What would ail him to be dead?  It is myself can tell you the true story.  No man in Ireland ever was half as good as him!  It was himself mastered the beast and dragged the heart out of him and forced down a squirrel’s heart in its place, and slapped a bridle on him.  And he himself did but stagger and go to his knees in the heat and drunkenness of the battle, and rose up after as good as ever he was!  It is out putting ointments on him that I was up to this, and healing up his cuts and wounds!  Oh, what ails you, honey, that you will not waken?