One morning in May when the dew lay thick upon the meadows and every thrush had found a mate, the old lord went off for a long day's hunting, and the aged widow fell fast asleep. The beautiful lady sighed anew as the sweet spring sunshine flooded her prison, seeming to mock her with its splendour. 'Ah, woe is me!' she cried. 'I may not even rejoice in the sun as the meanest of God's creatures!' And in her great despair she called aloud to her own true knight, bidding him deliver her from her misery. Even as she spoke, a shadow fell across the window. A bird had stayed his flight beside it; he pressed through the bars and was at her feet. His ash-brown plumage and rounded wings told her he was a goshawk, and from the jesses on his legs she saw he had been a'hunting. While she gazed in surprise at his sudden appearance, she beheld a transformation, and in less time than it takes to tell, the goshawk had become a gallant knight, with raven locks and flashing eyes. It was the knight of her dreams, and with a cry of joy she flew to him.
'I could not come to thee before, my Sweet,' said he, 'since thou didst not call for me aloud. Now shall I be with thee at thy lightest wish, and no more shalt thou be lonely. But beware of the aged crone who guards thy door! Her purblind eyes are not beyond seeing, and should she discover me I must die.'
And now the beautiful lady no longer pined to leave her prison, for she had only to breathe his name, and her lover reappeared. Her beauty came back to her as gladness to the earth when the sun shines after rain, and her songs were as joyous as those of the lark when it soars high in the heavens. The old lord was greatly puzzled, and bade the ancient widow keep a careful watch.
'My beautiful lady is gay!' he said, with an ugly smile. 'We must learn why she and sighs are strangers. I had thought ere this to lay her to sleep beneath a smooth green coverlet, and it does not please me to see her thus content.'
The aged crone bathed her eyes in water that flowed from a sacred shrine, so that sight might come back to them, and hid herself behind a curtain when the beautiful lady thought that she had left the tower. From this place of vantage she beheld, shortly after, the arrival of the goshawk, and his transformation into a handsome and tender knight. Slipping away unseen, she hastened to her master and told him all, not forgetting to describe the beautiful lady's rapture in her knight's embrace.