They soon encountered a woodcutter of great girth and so tall that he looked at the knight eye to eye, though he stood upon the ground and Sir Gervais sat astride his charger. The peasant's beard was gray, but he was sturdy as an oak and so broad of chest that he, in rough cloth, was wider than the knight in his armour.

"Tell me, hefty varlet," Sir Gervais said, "knowest thou the hiding place of the evil, if puny, baron who has given insult to this dainty, high-born maiden behind me?"

"Dainty maiden?" cried the woodcutter, and he laughed until tears ran down his cheeks and he was obliged to hold his sides in ecstatic pain.

The princess whispered into the ear hole of Sir Gervais's helm that the scoffer who stood before them was the very baron they sought.

Then spake the knight behind his hand, asking, "But lacks not this stout fellow the qualities of frailty and decrepitude thou hast ascribed to the baron?"

"Ah, my love, hast thou forgot that all things here are other-seeming?"

"Uh-h-h-h-h... Ah! Of course! Aye, but art thou certain sure that yonder laughing giant is, in fact, a puny and feeble thing?"

"Seems he not otherwise?"

"Mostotherwise," the knight confessed with an uneasy glance at this huge ox of a man.

"Well then! There's your proof!"

Sir Gervais struggled to digest this, saying, "Uh-h-h-h-h... Ah! Of course!" Whereupon he addressed the seeming giant, saying, "Leave off thy laughter, uncivil cur, and hear my demands! Grant the swine of this princess of passing beauty the use of thine oak patch, or risk a passage of arms with Gervais, knight of the Table Round!"

The woodcutter dried his eyes upon his sleeve and said, "Hast taken leave of thy senses, lad? Were we to grapple, thee and me, I would crumple thine iron suit in my hands in such wise that thou wouldst be unable to get out when the need to shit came upon thee."

Sir Gervais whispered over his shoulder, "How is it, Princess, that this varlet does not tremble at my high rank and martial prowess?"

"Why 'tis clear as my maiden conscience, lover. Just as he appears to thine enchanted eyes to be vast and well-proportioned, so dost thou appear to him to be a scrawny thing of slight danger. Such is the way of other-seemingness."

Sir Gervais blinked and bent his mind to this complex matter. After a longish time, he cried out, "Ah-h-h! Of course!" Then he chuckled to himself. "What a dolorous surprise will be his, should we meet in harsh combat." Then to the peasant he shouted, "Enough of this petty parley! Do as I bade thee, churl, lest thy brittle old bones be brast by this hand!"

"Nay, nay," the seeming giant said, waving away the glowering knight's threat. "Do not require that I bash thee, lad, for I am as gentle of humour as I am stout of limb. Know ye that yon stenchy hag has oft and again sent befuddled fools to wrest my oak patch from me, and each of those simple fellows has earned damage most woeful. But I had rather deal with thee than dent thee. Let us bargain. Forsake that crone clinging behind thee and let me welcome thee as my son. For know ye that my daughter is a frick, lusty-tempered lass of rutting age and the need to swive and be swiven is hot and hasty upon her. But there are no men in this damned forest but we two." And with this the peasant gestured to the side of the path, where stood a maiden ripe and moist, with breasts that strained the fabric of her bodice, with hair fresh-spun of gold, fair of face, clear of eye, slim of waist, comfortable of haunch, and whose pink tongue did flicker between teeth of purest white.

Seeing her, Sir Gervais's pulse did quop in his temple, and elsewhere the restraints of his armour did irk him.

But before he could spit on his palm and cry, "Agreed, done, and double-done!" the seeming hag rasped into his ear hole, "I perceive, brave hero, that thou dost pant and drool and quop and bulge, but remember that all things here are other-seeming. To unenchanted eyes this maiden is revealed to be the very lees and slag of womanhood, ugly beneath description, diseased to the marrow, so repulsive that passing toads do retch and gag." And she went on to confide that the source of her discord with the scrawny baron was that he could not marry off his flawed and blemished daughter because his neighbour's beauty diminished the wretched little thing by comparison.

After a very long silence devoted to trying to unsnarl this, Sir Gervais said, "Uh-h-h... You mean... Wait a minute— She's not... While you're... Hm-m-m. Ah-h-h, of course!" Nevertheless, his manhood continued to pulse and quop of its own will until the crone mentioned that the seeming frick and juicy girl was not of their class. Her vowels! Her aitches! No, no, not at all one of us.The knight almost swooned with relief at his narrow escape from the disgrace of foining beneath his station. "Without thy guidance, Princess, I might have fallen victim to this knave's low plot! Prepare to suffer, varlet!" And with this, he drew his sword with the intention of cleaving the woodcutter's pate down to his saucy grin.

But the seeming giant grasped the hilt in midair, brast the blade over his knee, and tossed the pieces into the brook.

"Oh-ho!" cried the knight. 'Wow hast thou precipitated my wrath upon thine aged and brittle back!" He leapt from the saddle and clutched at his adversary's throat.

But the woodcutter lifted the grasping hands from his throat as easily as if they had been placed there in caress, and he slapped those steel gauntlets together until the knight's palms stung with his vigorous applause. Then he turned the knight upside down and swung him so that his head played the clapper to the bell of his helm.

"There now," he said, setting Sir Gervais again upon his feet. "Let that be an end to it. If thou wilt not have my daughter to wed, so be it. Go and pester me no further."

Dazed, his ears ringing, his palms throbbing, the knight staggered to his horse and clung to the pommel, his knees buckling.

But the seeming hag leaned down from the saddle and whispered, "Prithee, be more gentle with this frail old baron, my champion! Though I would see him punished for his insults, I do not want the sin of his murder upon thy soul!"

"Sayest what?" Sir Gervais muttered, half senseless.

"Thou hast done him great and telling hurt. Sure, he must yield after another such chastisement."

"Ihave wrought hurt upon him?"

"Joy-o'-my-nights, hast thou forgot that here all things are other-seeming?"

"What?" The battered knight frowned in deepest thought. "Uh-h-h-h." He squinted at the sky in intense concentration. "Er-r-r-r-r." He squeezed his eyes shut and marshalled all his powers of reasoning to the problem. "Uhn-n-n-n-n." And finally, "Ah, of course!" And with that, he flung himself again at the seeming giant's throat.

Annoyed by this fool's persistence, the woodcutter grasped him by his shoulders and shook him until his limbs dangled and flopped loose, then he forced the knight's helmet into the fork of an oak and left him hanging by his chin, his body swaying gently in the breeze. And with this, he strode away, taking his daughter with him.

Tossing the fig after the departing woodcutter, the seeming hag growled bitterly that Sir Gervais was useless to a poor girl seeking to affirm her swine's snouting rights, and she departed to her castle to await the arrival of a stouter champion.

Night fell; the forest darkened; nocturnal creatures scuttled and scurried; and still Sir Gervais hung in deepest melancholy, wondering what magic had transported him to this high tree and lodged his neck in the crook of this branch after he had so sorely punished the feeble old baron that enchantment had disguised as a stout woodcutter.

He was lost in these philosophical speculations when a soft voice called from the forest floor. Bending his eyes downward-for nothing else could he move-the knight espied the seeming lush and juicy daughter of the seeming giant, the moonlight shining upon her golden-seeming hair and her bulging, ripe-seeming breasts.