my ground manfully, and covered my body with my sword.
If I had had the luck to meet with a fighting friar indeed,

I might have been thwacked, and soundly too; but I hold myself
a match for any two laymen; it takes nine fighting laymen

to make a fighting friar."
"Whence come you now, holy father?" asked Matilda.

"From Rubygill Abbey," said the friar, "whither I never return:
For I must seek some hermit cell,

Where I alone my beads may tell,
And on the wight who that way fares

Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs,
Levy a toll, levy a toll,

Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs."
"What is the matter then, father?" said Matilda.

"This is the matter," said the friar: "my holy brethren have held
a chapter on me, and sentenced me to seven years' privation of wine.

I therefore deemed it fitting to take my departure, which they would
fain have prohibited. I was enforced to clear the way with my staff.

I have grievously beaten my dearlybeloved brethren: I grieve thereat;
but they enforced me thereto. I have beaten them much; I mowed them

down to the right and to the left, and left them like an ill-reaped field
of wheat, ear and straw pointing all ways, scattered in singleness and

jumbled in masses; and so bade them farewell, saying, Peace be with you.
But I must not tarry, lest danger be in my rear: therefore, farewell,

sweet Matilda; and farewell, noble baron; and farewell, sweet Matilda again,
the alpha and omega of father Michael, the first and the last."

"Farewell, father," said the baron, a little softened;
"and God send you be never assailed by more than fifty men

at a time."
"Amen," said the friar, "to that good wish."

"And we shall meet again, father, I trust," said Matilda.
"When the storm is blown over," said the baron.

"Doubt it not," said the friar, "though flooded Trent were between us,
and fifty devils guarded the bridge."

He kissed Matilda's forehead, and walked away without a song.
CHAPTER VIII

Let gallows gape for dog: let man go free. Henry V.
A page had been brought up in Gamwell-Hall, who, while he was little,

had been called Little John, and continued to be so called after
he had grown to be a foot taller than any other man in the house.

He was full seven feet high. His latitude was worthy of his longitude,
and his strength was worthy of both; and though an honest man by profession,

he had practiced archery on the king's deer for the benefit of his
master's household, and for the improvement of his own eye and hand,

till his aim had become infallible within the range of two miles.
He had fought manfully in defence of his young master, took his captivity

exceedingly to heart, and fell into bitter grief and boundless rage
when he heard that he had been tried in Nottingham and sentenced to die.

Alice Gamwell, at Little John's request, wrote three letters of one tenour;
and Little John, having attached them to three blunt arrows, saddled the

fleetest steed in old Sir Guy of Gamwell's stables, mounted, and rode first to
Arlingford Castle, where he shot one of the three arrows over the battlements;

then to Rubygill Abbey, where he shot the second into the abbey-garden;
then back past Gamwell-Hall to the borders of Sherwood Forest,

where he shot the third into the wood. Now the first of these arrows
lighted in the nape of the neck of Lord Fitzwater, and lodged itself firmly

between his skin and his collar; the second rebounded with the hollow
vibration of a drumstick from the shaven sconce of the abbot of Rubygill;

and the third pitched perpendicularly into the centre of a venison pasty
in which Robin Hood was making incision.

Matilda ran up to her father in the court of Arlingford Castle,
seized the arrow, drew off the letter, and concealed it in her

bosom before the baron had time to look round, which he did
with many expressions of rage against the impudent villain

who had shot a blunt arrow into the nape of his neck.
"But you know, father," said Matilda, "a sharp arrow in the same place would

have killed you; therefore the sending a blunt one was very considerate."
"Considerate, with a vengeance!" said the baron.

"Where was the consideration of sending it at all?
This is some of your forester's pranks. He has missed you

in the forest, since I have kept watch and ward over you,
and by way of a love-token and a remembrance to you takes

a random shot at me."
The abbot of Rubygill picked up the missile-missive or messenger arrow,

which had rebounded from his shaven crown, with a very unghostly
malediction on the sender, which he suddenly checked with a pious

and consolatory reflection on the goodness of Providence in having
blessed him with such a thickness of skull, to which he was now indebted

for temporal preservation, as he had before been for spiritual promotion.
He opened the letter, which was addressed to father Michael;

and found it to contain an intimation that William Gamwell was to be
hanged on Monday at Nottingham.

"And I wish," said the abbot, "father Michael were to be hanged with him:
an ungratefulmonster, after I had rescued him from the fangs of

civil justice, to reward my lenity by not leaving a bone unbruised
among the holy brotherhood of Rubygill."

Robin Hood extracted from his venison pasty a similar intimation
of the evil destiny of his cousin, whom he determined, if possible,

to rescue from the jaws of Cerberus.
The sheriff of Nottingham, though still sore with his bruises,

was so intent on revenge, that he raised himself from his bed
to attend the execution of William Gamwell. He rode to the august

structure of retributive Themis, as the French call a gallows,
in all the pride and pomp of shrievalty, and with a splendid

retinue of well-equipped knaves and varlets, as our ancestors
called honest serving-men.

Young Gamwell was brought forth with his arms pinioned behind him;
his sister Alice and his father, Sir Guy, attending him in disconsolate mood.

He had rejected the confessor provided by the sheriff, and had insisted on
the privilege of choosing his own, whom Little John had promised to bring.

Little John, however, had not made his appearance when the fatal
procession began its march; but when they reached the place of execution,

Little John appeared, accompanied by a ghostly friar.
"Sheriff," said young Gamwell, "let me not die with my hands pinioned:

give me a sword, and set any odds of your men against me, and let
me die the death of a man, like the descendant of a noble house,

which has never yet been stained with ignominy."
"No, no," said the sheriff; "I have had enough of setting odds against you.

I have sworn you shall be hanged, and hanged you shall be."
"Then God have mercy on me," said young Gamwell; "and now, holy friar,

shrive my sinful soul."
The friar approached.

"Let me see this friar," said the sheriff: "if he be the friar
of the bridge, I had as lief have the devil in Nottingham;

but he shall find me too much for him here."
"The friar of the bridge," said Little John, "as you very

well know, sheriff, was father Michael of Rubygill Abbey,
and you may easily see that this is not the man."

"I see it," said the sheriff; "and God be thanked for his absence."
Young Gamwell stood at the foot of the ladder. The friar approached him,

opened his book, groaned, turned up the whites of his eyes,
tossed up his arms in the air, and said "Dominus vobiscum."

He then crossed both his hands on his breast under the folds
of his holy robes, and stood a few moments as if in inward prayer.

A deep silence among the attendant crowd accompanied this action
of the friar; interrupted only by the hollow tone of the death-bell,

at long and dreary intervals. Suddenly the friar threw off
his holy robes, and appeared a forester clothed in green,

with a sword in his right hand and a horn in his left.
With the sword he cut the bonds of William Gamwell, who instantly

snatched a sword from one of the sheriff's men; and with the horn
he blew a loud blast, which was answered at once by four bugles