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Maid Marian-Part8_Thomas Love Peacock(1785-1866)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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from the quarters of the four winds, and from each quarter came

five-and-twenty bowmen running all on a row.



"Treason! treason!" cried the sheriff. Old Sir Guy sprang to his

son's side, and so did Little John; and the four setting back



to back, kept the sheriff and his men at bay till the bowmen came

within shot and let fly their arrows among the sheriff's men, who,



after a brief resistance, fled in all directions. The forester,

who had personated the friar, sent an arrow after the flying sheriff,



calling with a strong voice, "To the sheriff's left arm,

as a keepsake from Robin Hood." The arrow reached its destiny;



the sheriff redoubled his speed, and, with the one arrow in his arm,

did not stop to breathe till he was out of reach of another.



The foresters did not waste time in Nottingham, but were soon at a distance

from its walls. Sir Guy returned with Alice to Gamwell-Hall; but thinking



he should not be safe there, from the share he had had in his son's rescue,

they only remained long enough to supply themselves with clothes and money,



and departed, under the escort of Little John, to another seat of the Gamwells

in Yorkshire. Young Gamwell, taking it for granted that his offence



was past remission, determined on joining Robin Hood, and accompanied him

to the forest, where it was deemed expedient that he should change his name;



and he was rechristened without a priest, and with wine instead of water,

by the immortal name of Scarlet.



CHAPTER IX

Who set my man i' the stocks?----



I set him there, Sir but his own disorders

Deserved much less advancement.--Lear.



The baron was inflexible in his resolution not to let Matilda leave

the castle. The letter, which announced to her the approaching



fate of young Gamwell, filled her with grief, and increased

the irksomeness of a privation which already preyed sufficiently



on her spirits, and began to undermine her health. She had no longer

the consolation of the society of her old friend father Michael:



the little fat friar of Rubygill was substituted as the castle confessor,

not without some misgivings in his ghostly bosom; but he was more



allured by the sweet savour of the good things of this world at

Arlingford Castle, than deterred by his awe of the lady Matilda,



which nevertheless was so excessive, from his recollection of the twang

of the bow-string, that he never ventured to find her in the wrong,



much less to enjoin any thing in the shape of penance, as was

the occasional practice of holy confessors, with or without cause,



for the sake of pious discipline, and what was in those days

called social order, namely, the preservation of the privileges



of the few who happened to have any, at the expense of the swinish

multitude who happened to have none, except that of working and



being shot at for the benefit of their betters, which is obviously

not the meaning of social order in our more enlightened times:



let us therefore be grateful to Providence, and sing Te Deum laudamus

in chorus with the Holy Alliance.



The little friar, however, though he found the lady spotless,

found the butler a great sinner: at least so it was conjectured,



from the length of time he always took to confess him in the buttery.

Matilda became every day more pale and dejected: her spirit,



which could have contended against any strenuous affliction,

pined in the monotonous inaction to which she was condemned.



While she could freely range the forest with her lover in

the morning, she had been content to return to her father's



castle in the evening, thus preserving underanged the balance

of her duties, habits, and affections; not without a hope that



the repeal of her lover's outlawry might be eventually obtained,

by a judiciousdistribution of some of his forest spoils among



the holy fathers and saints that-were-to-be,--pious proficients

in the ecclesiastic art equestrian, who rode the conscience



of King Henry with double-curb bridles, and kept it well in hand

when it showed mettle and seemed inclined to rear and plunge.



But the affair at Gamwell feast threw many additional

difficulties in the way of the accomplishment of this hope;



and very shortly afterwards King Henry the Second went to make

up in the next world his quarrel with Thomas-a-Becket;



and Richard Coeur de Lion made all England resound with




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