in Sherwood Forest."

Then Will Stutely leaped high aloft and laughed loudly, clapping his
hands for pure joy that he should have been chosen from among them all.
"Now thanks, good master," quoth he, "and if I bring not news of those
knaves to thee, call me no more thy sly Will Stutely."

Then he clad himself in a friar's gown, and underneath the robe he hung
a good broadsword in such a place that he could easily lay hands upon
it. Thus clad, he set forth upon his quest, until he came to the verge
of the forest, and so to the highway. He saw two bands of the Sheriff's
men, yet he turned neither to the right nor the left, but only drew his
cowl the closer over his face, folding his hands as if in meditation. So
at last he came to the Sign of the Blue Boar. "For," quoth he to
himself, "our good friend Eadom will tell me all the news."

At the Sign of the Blue Boar he found a band of the Sheriffs men
drinking right lustily; so, without speaking to anyone, he sat down upon
a distant bench, his staff in his hand, and his head bowed forward as
though he were meditating. Thus he sat waiting until he might see the
landlord apart, and Eadom did not know him, but thought him to be some
poor tired friar, so he let him sit without saying a word to him or
molesting him, though he liked not the cloth. "For," said he to
himself, "it is a hard heart that kicks the lame dog from off the sill."
As Stutely sat thus, there came a great house cat and rubbed against his
knee, raising his robe a palm's-breadth high. Stutely pushed his robe
quickly down again, but the constable who commanded the Sheriffs men saw
what had passed, and saw also fair Lincoln green beneath the friar's
robe. He said nothing at the time, but communed within himself in this
wise: "Yon is no friar of orders gray, and also, I wot, no honest yeoman