to say any thing which the law of Holy Writ says not?"

"The law of Holy Writ does say it," said Robin; "I expound it so to say;
and I will produce sixty commentators to establish my exposition."

And so saying, he produced a horn from beneath his cloak, and blew
three blasts, and threescore bowmen in green came leaping from the bushes

and trees; and young Allen was the first among them to give Robin
his sword, while Friar Tuck and Little John marched up to the altar.

Robin stripped the bishop and clerk of their robes, and put them on the friar
and Little John; and Allen advanced to take the hand of the bride.

Her cheeks grew red and her eyes grew bright, as she locked her hand
in her lover's, and tripped lightly with him into the church.

"This marriage will not stand," said the bishop, "for they have not been
thrice asked in church."

"We will ask them seven times," said Little John, "lest three
should not suffice."

"And in the meantime," said Robin, "the knight and the bishop
shall dance to my harping."

So Robin sat in the church porch and played away merrily, while his
foresters formed a ring, in the centre of which the knight and bishop

danced with exemplary alacrity; and if they relaxed their exertions,
Scarlet gently touched them up with the point of an arrow.

The knight grimaced ruefully, and begged Robin to think of his gout.
"So I do," said Robin; "this is the true antipodagron:

you shall dance the gout away, and be thankful to me while you live.
I told you," he added to the bishop, "I would play at this wedding;

but you did not tell me that you would dance at it.
The next couple you marry, think of the Roman law."

The bishop was too much out of breath to reply; and now the young
couple issued from church, and the bride having made a farewell

obeisance to her parents, they departed together with the foresters,
the parents storming, the attendants laughing, the bishop puffing

and blowing, and the knight rubbing his gouty foot, and uttering
doleful lamentations for the gold and jewels with which he had

so unwittingly adorned and cowered the bride.
CHAPTER XIV

As ye came from the holy land
Of blessed Walsinghame,

Oh met ye not with my true love,
As by the way ye came?--Old Ballad.

In pursuance of the arrangement recorded in the twelfth chapter,
the baron, Robin, and Marian disguised themselves as pilgrims

returned from Palestine, and travelling from the sea-coast of
Hampshire to their home in Northumberland. By dint of staff and

cockle-shell, sandal and scrip, they proceeded in safety the greater
part of the way (for Robin had many sly inns and resting-places

between Barnsdale and Sherwood), and were already on the borders
of Yorkshire, when, one evening, they passed within view of a castle,

where they saw a lady standing on a turret, and surveying
the whole extent of the valley through which they were passing.

A servant came running from the castle, and delivered to them a message
from his lady, who was sick with expectation of news from her lord

in the Holy Land, and entreated them to come to her, that she might
question them concerning him. This was an awkward occurrence:

but there was no presence for refusal, and they followed the servant
into the castle. The baron, who had been in Palestine in his youth,

undertook to be spokesman on the occasion, and to relate his own
adventures to the lady as having happened to the lord in question.

This preparation enabled him to be so minute and circumstantial
in his detail, and so coherent in his replies to her questions,

that the lady fell implicitly into the delusion, and was delighted
to find that her lord was alive and in health, and in high favour

with the king, and performing prodigies of valour in the name
of his lady, whose miniature he always wore in his bosom.

The baron guessed at this circumstance from the customs of that age,
and happened to be in the right.

"This miniature," added the baron, "I have had the felicity
to see, and should have known you by it among a million."

The baron was a little embarrassed by some questions of the lady
concerning her lord's personal appearance; but Robin came to his aid,

observing a picture suspended opposite to him on the wall,
which he made a bold conjecture to be that of the lord in question;

and making a calculation of the influences of time and war,
which he weighed with a comparison of the lady's age, he gave

a description of her lord sufficiently like the picture in its
groundwork to be a true resemblance, and sufficiently differing

from it in circumstances to be more an original than a copy.
The lady was completely deceived, and entreated them to partake

her hospitality for the night; but this they deemed it prudent
to decline, and with many humble thanks for her kindness,

and representations of the necessity of not delaying their
homeward course, they proceeded on their way.

As they passed over the drawbridge, they met Sir Ralph Montfaucon
and his squire, who were wandering in quest of Marian, and were

entering to claim that hospitality which the pilgrims had declined.
Their countenances struck Sir Ralph with a kind of imperfect recognition,

which would never have been matured, but that the eyes of Marian,
as she passed him, encountered his, and the images of those stars of beauty

continued involuntarily twinkling in his sensorium to the exclusion
of all other ideas, till memory, love, and hope concurred with imagination

to furnish a probable reason for their haunting him so pertinaciously.
Those eyes, he thought, were certainly the eyes of Matilda Fitzwater;

and if the eyes were hers, it was extremelyprobable, if not logically
consecutive, that the rest of the body they belonged to was hers also.

Now, if it were really Matilda Fitzwater, who were her two companions?
The baron? Aye, and the elder pilgrim was something like him.

And the earl of Huntingdon? Very probably. The earl and the baron might
be good friends again, now that they were both in disgrace together.

While he was revolving these cogitations, he was introduced to the lady,
and after claiming and receiving the promise of hospitality,

he inquired what she knew of the pilgrims who had just departed?
The lady told him they were newly returned from Palestine, having been long

in the Holy Land. The knight expressed some scepticism on this point.
The lady replied, that they had given her so minute a detail of her

lord's proceedings, and so accurate a description of his person,
that she could not be deceived in them. This staggered the knight's

confidence in his own penetration; and if it had not been a heresy
in knighthood to suppose for a moment that there could be in rerum

natura such another pair of eyes as those of his mistress,
he would have acquiesced implicitly in the lady's judgment.

But while the lady and the knight were conversing, the warder blew
his bugle-horn, and presently entered a confidential messenger

from Palestine, who gave her to understand that her lord was well;
but entered into a detail of his adventures most completely at

variance with the baron's narrative, to which not the correspondence
of a single incident gave the remotest colouring of similarity.

It now became manifest that the pilgrims were not true men;
and Sir Ralph Montfaucon sate down to supper with his head full

of cogitations, which we shall leave him to chew and digest with his
pheasant and canary.

Meanwhile our three pilgrims proceeded on their way.
The evening set in black and lowering, when Robin turned

aside from the main track, to seek an asylum for the night,
along a narrow way that led between rocky and woody hills.

A peasant observed the pilgrims as they entered that narrow pass,
and called after them: "Whither go you, my masters? there

are rogues in that direction."
"Can you show us a direction," said Robin, "in which there are none?

If so we will take it in preference." The peasant grinned,
and walked away whistling.

The pass widened as they advanced, and the woods grew thicker and darker
around them. Their path wound along the slope of a woody declivity,

which rose high above them in a thick rampart of foliage,
and descended almost precipitously to the bed of a small river,

which they heard dashing in its rocky channel, and saw its white foam
gleaming at intervals in the last faint glimmerings of twilight.

In a short time all was dark, and the rising voice of the wind