Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times
noon, for I cannot suffer you to go on till I know."
"Cannot suffer us to go on?" cried Blawket. "You are a bold man to say
so to five."
"I am a bold man," replied the forester, "as bold as Robin Rood; and I
tell you again, good yeomen, that I must know."
What might have been Blawket's reply, who shall say? for--as we have
before told the reader--he had some idea of his own consequence, and no
slight reliance on his own vigour; but Ralph Harland interposed,
exclaiming, "Stay, stay, Blawket, this must be the man we look for to
give us aid. I have seen his face before, I am well-nigh sure. Let me
speak with him."
"Ay, ay, they show themselves in all sorts of forms," answered his
companion, while Harland dismounted and approached the stranger. "One
of them took me in as a ploughman, and now we have them in another
shape."
In the meanwhile, Harland had approached the forester, and had put into
his hand a small strip of parchment, in shape and appearance very much
like the ticket of a trunk in modern days. It was covered on one side
with writing in a large, good hand, but yet it would have puzzled the
wit of the best decipherer of those or of our own times to make out
what it meant, without a key. It ran as follows:--
"Scathelock, number one, five, seven, to the man of Sherwood." Then
came the figure of an arrow, and then the words, "A friend, as by word
of mouth. Help, help, help!"
This was all, but it seemed perfectly satisfactory to the eye that
rested upon it, for he instantly crushed the parchment in his hand,
saying, "I thought so!--Go on for half a mile," he continued; "follow
the man that you will find at the corner of the first path. Say nothing
to him, but stop where he stops, and take the bits out of your horses'
mouths, for they must feed ere they go on. Away!" he added; "away! and
lose no time."
Ralph Harland sprang upon his horse's back again, and rode on with the
rest, while the forester took a narrow path across the brushwood, which
led to the thicker wood above. They soon lost sight of him, however, as
they themselves rode on; but when they had gone nearly half a mile,
they heard the sound of a horn in the direction which he had taken.
A moment or two after, they came to a path leading to the right, and
looking down it, saw a personage, dressed in the habit of a miller's
man, leaning upon a stout staff in the midst of the narrow road. The
instant he beheld them he turned away, and walked slowly onward,
without turning to see whether they noticed or not. Harland led the way
after him, however, for the path would not admit two abreast, and the
rest followed at a walk.
They thus proceeded for somewhat more than a mile, taking several
turns, and passing the end of more than one path, each so like the
other, that the eye must have been well practised in woodcraft which
could retrace the way back to the high road again. At length they came
to a little square cut in the wood, about the eighth part of an acre in
extent, at the further corner of which was a hut built in the simplest
manner, with posts driven into the ground, and thatched over, while the
interstices were filled with flat layers of earth, a square hole being
left open for a window, and one somewhat longer appearing for the door.
Here their guide paused, and turning round, looked them over from head
to foot without saying a word.
"Ha! miller, is this your mill?" said Blawket, as they rode up.
"Yes," answered the stranger, in a rough tone, shaking his staff at the
yeoman; "and this is my mill-wheel, which shall grind the bran out of
any one who asks me saucy questions."
"On my life, I should like to try!" cried Blawket, jumping down from
his horse.
"Hush--hush!" cried Harland; "you know we were told not to speak to
him."
"And a good warning, too," said the other. "You will soon have somebody
to speak to, and then pray speak to the purpose."
"Ah! Madge she was a merry maid,
A merry maid, with a round black eye;
And everything Jobson to her said,
The saucy jade she ask'd him, 'Why?'
"'I'll deck thee out in kirtles fine,
If you'll be mine,' he said, one day;
'I'll give you gold, if you'll be mine.'
But 'Why?' was all the maid would say.
"'I love you well, indeed I do,'
The youth he answered, with a sigh;
'To you I ever will be true.'
The saucy girl still ask'd him, 'Why!'
"But one day, near the church, he said,
'The ring is here--the priest is nigh,
Come, let us in, Madge, and be wed;'
But then she no more ask'd him, 'Why?'"
So sung the miller, with an easy, careless, saucy air, leaning his back
against the turf wall of the hut, and twirling his staff round between
his finger and thumb, as if prepared to tell the clock upon the head of
any one who approached too near.
There was no time for any farther questions, however: for he had
scarcely finished the last stave, when the forester whom they had first
met appeared from behind the hut, with a brow that looked not quite so
free and gay as when the travellers had last seen him. "Come--come,
master miller," he said, "you should have to do with corn. Get some
oats for these good men's horses, for they must speed back again as
fast as they came."
"They will find oats enough in the hut, Robin," replied the other; "but
I will do your bidding however, though I be a refractory cur."
Almost at the same moment that the above reply was made, the young
franklin was speaking likewise.
"Go back again faster than we came?" he said. "I shall not feel
disposed to do that, unless----"
"Unless I show you good cause," interrupted the forester. "But I am not
going to do that. You shall stay with me for a while: these men may go
back again, for we do not want them. Let them return by Mansfield; that
is their only chance of finding those they seek. The Southwell and the
Winborn side I will answer for. You know me, Harland, I think; and if
you do, you know that my word is not in vain."
"I believe I do know you," replied Ralph Harland; "and I will trust
you, at all events. But why should I stay, and not go with them, if
there is a chance of finding the people that we want on the Mansfield
road?"
"Because the chance is but a small one," replied the forester, "and
because there is something for you to do here, which, I fear me,
is better for you now than anything that can be done for you
elsewhere.--Quick! slit open the bag with your knife, careless miller,
and let the horses feed out of it on the ground. I want the men to get
back quick. Hark ye, yeoman! Is your name Blawket?"
"The same, Master Forester," replied the yeoman. "What of me?"
"Why, this," answered the other. "I have heard of you from Scathelock,
and know you are a faithful fellow. You must return to my good lord,
your master, for me. Tell him that I will meet him between Bloodworth
and Nurstead, the day after to-morrow, by three in the afternoon. Let
him bring his whole company with him, for I have tidings to give which
it imports them much to hear."
"Find some other messenger, good forester," replied the yeoman. "My
lord sent me to seek for Richard Keen and Kate Greenly, and bade me not
come back without having found them."
"Pshaw!" said the forester, "did I not tell you you would find them on
the road to Mansfield, if at all? If they be not there, they have given
you the slip, and are in Nottingham by this time. Away with you, Master
Blawket, without more words! Give the man a cup of wine, miller; his
stomach is sour with long fasting."
"I know not," murmured Blawket, hesitating still, but feeling an
authority in the forester's speech, under which his own self-confidence
quailed. "But who shall I say to my lord sent me back with this
message? I must give him some name, good forester."
"Well, tell him," replied the person he addressed, with a smile upon
his countenance, "that it is Robert of the Lees by Ely, sent you."
"Tell him Robin Hood!" cried the miller, with a loud laugh.
"Do as I bid you," rejoined the forester. "Say Robert of the Lees: by
that name will he know me, from passages in other days; and hark!" he
continued--"be sure the Earl of Ashby comes with him, and utter not
one word of what that foolish miller just now said."
"I understand--I understand!" cried Blawket, with a much altered
manner--"I will do your bidding, Master Robin of the Lees; but this
horse eats so wondrous slow."
"He will soon be done," said the forester. "Give him the wine, miller.
We have no cups here; take it from the stoup good Blawket, and hand it
to your comrades."
A large tankard of wine which had been brought from the hut went round,
and then a minute or two passed in silence while the horses finished
their corn. When it was done, the four yeomen mounted, and at a word
from the forester, the miller led the way before them at a quicker
pace, leaving his leader behind with the young franklin.
When they were gone, the forester took a turn backwards and forwards
before the hut, without speaking; then pausing, he grasped Harland's.
hand, saying, in a tone of stern feeling--"Come, Harland, be a man!"
"You have bad tidings?" asked the young franklin, gazing with painful
earnestness in his face. "Tell me, quickly!--the worst blow is past.
They are not on the road to Mansfield?"
"There is scarcely a chance!" said Robert of the Lees; "I believe they
passed some two hours since, and----"
"And what?" demanded Ralph, in a low, but eager tone. "And Richard of
Ashby is at Nottingham, waiting for them."
Ralph Harland cast himself down upon the ground, and hid his eyes upon
his hands; while the stout forester stood by, gazing upon him with a
look of deep sadness and commiseration, and repeating three times the
words, "Poor fellow!"
"Oh, you cannot tell--you cannot tell!" cried Ralph Harland, starting
up, and wringing his hand hard; "you cannot tell what it is to have
loved as I have loved--to have trusted as I have trusted, and to find
that she in whom my whole hopes rested, she whom I believed to be as
pure as the first fallen snow, is but a wanton harlot after all. To
quit her father's house, voluntarily--to fly with a base stranger--the
promised bride of an honest man--to make herself the leman of a knave
like that! Oh, it is bitter--bitter--bitter! Worse than the blackest
misfortune with which fate can plague me that I can never think of her
again but as the paramour of Richard de Ashby! Would I had died
first--died, believing that she was good and true!"
"It is a hard case," said the forester, "and I grieve for you deeply;
but there is a harder case still than it,--that of her father, I mean.
To you, she can be nothing more--she has severed the tie that bound you
together; but she is still his daughter, and nothing can cut that bond
asunder, though fallen and dishonoured.--It were well if we could
separate her from her seducer, Ralph, and give her back to her father's
care. This is all, I fear, that now remains for us to do.--Had I known
this two hours earlier," he continued, "the nose and ears of Richard de
Ashby would by this time have been nailed to the post where the four
roads meet; but the runner Scathelock sent me last night, fell lame on
the other side of the abbey, and I did not get the news till about an
hour before you came. The scoundrel, in the meanwhile, skirted the
forest by Southwell at ten o'clock this morning, so that it is all too
late. The time of punishment for his crimes, however, will come: we
need not doubt that; but the time for preventing this one, I fear, is
past."
"But how--but how can we punish him?" cried Ralph Harland, eagerly; "if
he be in Nottingham town, how can we reach him there? How can we even