At home in Wierysdale.

"'Welcome, my lorde,' sayd his lady;
'Syr, lost is all your good?'
'Be mery dame,' said the knight,
'And pray for Robyn Hode,

"That ever his soule be in blysse,
He holpe me out of my tene;
Ne had not be his kyndenesse,
Beggers had we ben.'"


The story wanders on, through pages of verse like the above, but we may
fitly end it with a page of prose. The old singers are somewhat prolix;
it behooves us to be brief.

A twelvemonth passed. The day fixed by the knight to repay his friend of
the merry greenwood came. On that day the highway skirting the forest
was made brilliant by a grand array of ecclesiastics and their
retainers, at their head no less a personage than the fat cellarer of
St. Mary's.

Unluckily for them, the outlaws were out that day, on the lookout for
game of this description, and the whole pious procession was swept up
and taken to Robin Hood's greenwood court. The merry fellow looked at
his new guests with a smile. The knight had given the Virgin as his
security,--surely the Virgin had taken him at his word, and sent these
holy men to repay her debt.