that the party consisted of the lady Matilda and friar Michael,

young Gamwell, cousin Robin, and about half-a-dozen foresters.
The knightpointed out the earl to the sheriff, who exclaimed,

"Here, then, we have him an easy prey;" and they rode on manfully
towards the bridge, on which the other party made halt.

"Who be these," said the friar, "that come riding so fast this way?
Now, as God shall judge me, it is that false knight Sir Ralph Montfaucon,

and the sheriff of Nottingham, with a posse of men. We must make good
our post, and let them dislodge us if they may."

The two parties were now near enough to parley; and the sheriff
and the knight, advancing in the front of the cavalcade,

called on the lady, the friar, young Gamwell, and the foresters,
to deliver up that false-traitor, Robert, formerly Earl

of Huntingdon. Robert himself made answer by letting fly
an arrow that struck the ground between the fore feet of

the sheriff's horse. The horse reared up from the whizzing,
and lodged the sheriff in the dust; and, at the same time,

the fair Matilda favoured the knight with an arrow in his
right arm, that compelled him to withdraw from the affray.

His men lifted the sheriff carefully up, and replaced him on
his horse, whom he immediately with great rage and zeal urged

on to the assault with his fifty men at his heels, some of whom
were intercepted in their advance by the arrows of the foresters

and Matilda; while the friar, with an eight-foot staff,
dislodged the sheriff a second time, and laid on him with all

the vigour of the church militant on earth, in spite of his
ejaculations of "Hey, friar Michael! What means this, honest friar?

Hold, ghostly friar! Hold, holy friar!"--till Matilda interposed,
and delivered the battered sheriff to the care of the foresters.

The friar continued flourishing his staff among the sheriff's men,
knocking down one, breaking the ribs of another, dislocating

the shoulder of a third, flattening the nose of a fourth,
cracking the skull of a fifth, and pitching a sixth into the river,

till the few, who were lucky enough to escape with whole bones,
clapped spurs to their horses and fled for their lives,

under a farewellvolley of arrows.
Sir Ralph's squire, meanwhile, was glad of the excuse of

attending his master's wound to absent himself from the battle;
and put the poor knight to a great deal of unnecessary pain

by making as long a business as possible of extracting the arrow,
which he had not accomplished when Matilda, approaching, extracted it

with great facility, and bound up the wound with her scarf,
saying, "I reclaim my arrow, sir knight, which struck where I

aimed it, to admonish you to desist from your enterprise.
I could as easily have lodged it in your heart."

"It did not need," said the knight, with rueful gallantry;
"you have lodged one there already."

"If you mean to say that you love me," said Matilda, "it is more than I
ever shall you: but if you will show your love by no further interfering

with mine, you will at least merit my gratitude."
The knight made a wry face under the double pain of heart and body caused

at the same moment by the material or martial, and the metaphorical
or erotic arrow, of which the latter was thus barbed by a declaration

more candid than flattering; but he did not choose to put in any such
claim to the lady's gratitude as would bar all hopes of her love:

he therefore remained silent; and the lady and her escort, leaving him
and the sheriff to the care of the squire, rode on till they came

in sight of Arlingford Castle, when they parted in several directions.
The friar rode off alone; and after the foresters had lost sight of him

they heard his voice through the twilight, singing,--
A staff, a staff, of a young oak graff,

That is both stoure and stiff,
Is all a good friar can needs desire

To shrive a proud sheriffe.
And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted so

Of the forester's greenwood game,
Wilt be in no haste thy time to waste

In seeking more taste of the same:
Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well,

Thou hadst better by far be the devil in hell,
Than the sheriff of Nottinghame.

CHAPTER VII
Now, master sheriff, what's your will with me? Henry IV.

Matilda had carried her point with the baron of ranging at liberty
whithersoever she would, under her positive promise to return home;

she was a sort of prisoner on parole: she had obtained this indulgence
by means of an obsolete habit of always telling the truth and keeping

her word, which our enlightened age has discarded with other barbarisms,
but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her,

that he could not help considering her word a better security than
locks and bars.

The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of
the new outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had taken all possible

precautions to keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that
they might cause the interruption of her greenwood liberty;

and it was only during her absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler,
being thrown off his guard by liquor, forgot her injunctions,

and regaled the baron with a long story of the right merry
adventure of Robin Hood and the abbot of Doubleflask.

The baron was one morning, as usual, cutting his way valorously
through a rampart of cold provision, when his ears were

suddenly assailed by a tremendous alarum, and sallying forth,
and looking from his castle wall, he perceived a large party

of armed men on the other side of the moat, who were calling on
the warder in the king's name to lower the drawbridge and raise

the portcullis, which had both been secured by Matilda's order.
The baron walked along the battlement till he came opposite

to these unexpected visitors, who, as soon as they saw him,
called out, "Lower the drawbridge, in the king's name."

"For what, in the devil's name?" said the baron.
"The sheriff of Nottingham," said one, "lies in bed grievously bruised,

and many of his men are wounded, and several of them slain;
and Sir Ralph Montfaucon, knight, is sore wounded in the arm;

and we are charged to apprehend William Gamwell the younger,
of Gamwell Hall, and father Michael of Rubygill Abbey,

and Matilda Fitzwater of Arlingford Castle, as agents and
accomplices in the said breach of the king's peace."

"Breach of the king's fiddlestick!" answered the baron.
"What do you mean by coming here with your cock and bull, stories of my

daughter grievously bruising the sheriff of Nottingham? You are a set
of vagabond rascals in disguise; and I hear, by the bye, there is

a gang of thieves that has just set up business in Sherwood Forest:
a pretty presence, indeed, to get into my castle with force and arms,

and make a famine in my buttery, and a drought in my cellar,
and a void in my strong box, and a vacuum in my silver scullery."

"Lord Fitzwater," cried one, "take heed how you resistlawful authority:
we will prove ourselves----"

"You will prove yourselves arrant knaves, I doubt not," answered the baron;
"but, villains, you shall be more grievously bruised by me than ever was

the sheriff by my daughter (a pretty tale truly!), if you do not forthwith
avoid my territory."

By this time the baron's men had flocked to the battlements,
with long-bows and cross-bows, slings and stones,

and Matilda with her bow and quiver at their head.
The assailants, finding the castle so well defended, deemed it

expedient to withdraw till they could return in greater force,