There,
being exhausted with hunger and weariness, he laid himself down in the
sunlight out beyond the borders of the forest and presently fell into a
deep sleep that was like to a swoon.
Now it chanced at that time that there came that way a certain damsel
attendant upon the Lady Loise. She perceiving that a man lay there on the
grass at the edge of the forest was at first of a mind to quit that place.
Then, seeing that the man lay very strangely still as though he were dead,
she went forward very softly and looked into his face.
Now that damsel had beheld Sir Tristram a great many times when he was at
the castle of the Lady Loise; wherefore now, in spite of his being so
starved and shrunken, and so unkempt and unshaved, she remembered his face
and she knew that this was Sir Tristram.
Therewith the damsel hurried away to the Lady Loise (and the lady was not a
very great distance away) and she said: "Lady, yonder way there lieth a man
by the forest side and I believe that it is Sir Tristram of Lyonesse. Yet
he is but half-clad and in great distress of body so that I know not of a
surety whether it is really Sir Tristram or not.
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