I cannot help grieving that amongst all the changes which have taken place,--amongst all the worlds, if I may so call them, which have come and gone in the lapse of time, the forest world should have altogether departed, leaving scarcely greater or more numerous vestiges of its existence than those that remain of the earth before the Flood. The green and bowery glades of the old forest, their pleasant places of sport and exercise, the haunts of the wild deer, the wolf, and the boar, the fairy-like dingles and dells, the woodcraft that they witnessed, the sciences, and the characters that were peculiar to themselves, have now, alas! passed away from most of the countries of Europe, and have left scarcely a glen where the wild stag can find shelter, or where the contemplative man can pause under the shade of old primeval trees, to reflect upon the past or speculate upon the future. The antlered monarch of the wood is now reduced to a domestic beast, in a walled park; and the man of thought, however much he may love nature\'s unadorned face, however much he may feel himself cribbed and confined amongst the works of human hands, must shut his prisoner fancies within the bounds of his own solitary chamber, unless he is fond to indulge them by the side of the grand but monotonous ocean. The infinite variety of the forest is no longer his: it belongs to another age, and to another class of beings.

In the times I write of, it was not so, and the greater part of every country in Europe was covered with rich and ancient wood; but, perhaps, no forest contained more to interest or to excite than that of merry Sherwood--comprising within itself, as the reader knows, a vast extent of very varied country, sweeping round villages, and even cities, and containing, in its involutions, many a hamlet, the inhabitants of which derived their sustenance from the produce of the forest ground.

The aspect of the wood itself was as different in different places as it is possible to conceive. In some spots the trees were far apart, with a wide expanse of open ground, covered by low brushwood, or the shall shrub bearing the bilberry; in others, you came to a wide extent, covered with nothing but high fern and old scrubbed hawthorn trees; but throughout a great part of the forest the sun seldom if ever penetrated, during the summer months, to the paths beneath, so thick was the canopy of green leaves above, while those paths themselves were generally so narrow that in many of them two men could not walk abreast.

There were other and wider ways, indeed, through the wood, some of them cart roads, for the accommodation of woodmen and carriers, some of them highways from one neighbouring town to another: but the latter were not very numerous or very much frequented--many a tale being told of travellers lightened of their baggage, in passing through Sherwood; and, to speak the truth, no one could very well say, at that time, who and what were the dwellers in the forest, or their profession; so that those who loved not strange company, kept to the more open country if they could.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful ride across almost any part of the woodland, offering magnificent changes of scene at every step, and the people of those times were not so incapable of enjoying it as has been generally supposed; but still, with all the tales of outlaws and robbers which were then afloat, it required a stout determination, or a case of great necessity, to impel any of the citizens of the neighbouring towns to make a trip across the forest in the spring or autumn of the year. Those who did so, usually came back with some story to tell, and some, indeed, brought home stripes upon their shoulders and empty bags. The latter, however, were almost always of particular classes. Rich monks and jovial friars occasionally fared ill; the petty tyrants of the neighbouring shire ran a great risk, if they trusted themselves far under the green leaf; the wealthy and ostentatious merchant might sometimes return rather lighter than he went; but the peasant, the honest franklin, the village curate, the young, and women of all degrees, had generally very little to relate, except that they had seen a forester here, or a forester there, who gave them a civil word, and bade God speed them, or who aided them, in any case of need, with skilful hands and a right good will.

Thus there was evidently a strong degree of favouritism shown in the dealings of the habitual dwellers in the greenwood with the various classes of travellers who passed through on business or on pleasure. But, nevertheless, it was the few who complained, and the many who lauded, so that the reputation of the merry men of Sherwood was high amongst all the inferior orders of society at the time when this tale begins.

So much was necessary to be said, to give the reader any idea of the scene into the midst of which we must now plunge, leaving Barnsdale behind us, and quitting Yorkshire for Nottingham.

It was about two o\'clock, on the second of May, then, that a party of horsemen reached a spot in the midst of Sherwood, where the road--after having passed for nearly two miles through a dense part of the wood, which the eye could not penetrate above fifteen or twenty yards on either side--ran down a slight sandy descent, and entered upon a more open scene, where the trees had been cleared away not many years before, and where some two hundred acres of ground appeared covered with scattered brushwood and bilberry bushes, sloping down the side of a wide hill, at the bottom of which the thick wood began again, extending in undulating lines for many a mile beneath the eye of the traveller.

The number of the journeyers was five; and they pulled in the rein to let their horses drink at a clear stream which crossed the road, and bubbling onward, was soon lost amongst the bushes beyond. Four of them were dressed as yeomen attached to some noble house; for although liveries, according to the modern acceptation of the word, were then unknown, and the term itself applied to quite a different thing, yet the habit was already coming in, of fixing a particular badge or cognizance upon all the followers or retainers of great noblemen, as well as of kings, whereby they might know each other in any of the frequent affrays which took place in those times. Sometimes it was fixed upon the breast, sometimes upon the back, sometimes upon the arm, where it appeared in the present instance. Each of the yeomen had a sword and buckler, a dagger on the right side, and a bow and a sheaf of arrows on the shoulders; and all were strong men and tall, with the Anglo-Saxon blood shining out in the complexion.

The fourth personage was no other than Ralph Harland, the stout young franklin, of whom we have already spoken. He, too, was well armed with sword and buckler, though he bore no bow. Besides the usual dagger, however, he wore, hanging by a green cord from his neck, a long, crooked, sharp-pointed knife, called in those days an anelace, which was, I believe, peculiar to the commons of England and Flanders, and which was often fatally employed in the field of battle in stabbing the heavy horses of the knights and men-at-arms.

The horses of this party were evidently tired with a long, hot ride, and the horsemen stopped, as I have said, to let their beasts drink in the stream before they proceeded onward. As they pulled up, a fat doe started from the brushwood about thirty yards distant, and bounded away towards the thicker parts of the forest, and at the same moment a loud, clear, mellow voice, exclaimed--"So, ho, madam! nobody will hurt you in the month of May! Give you good day, sirs!--whither are ye going?"

The eyes of all but young Harland had been following the deer, and his had been bent, with a look of sad and stern abstraction, upon the stream, but every one turned immediately as the words were uttered; and there before them on the road, stood the speaker. How he came there, however, no one could tell, for the moment before, the highway was clear for a quarter of a mile, and there seemed no bush or tree in the immediate neighbourhood sufficiently large to conceal a full grown man.

The personage who accosted them was certainly full-grown, and very well grown, too. He was in height about five feet eleven, but not what could be called large in the bone; at least, the proportion of the full and swelling muscle that clothed his limbs made the bone seem small. His foot, too, was less than might have been expected from his height; and though his hand was strong and sinewy, the shape was good, and the fingers were long. His breadth over the chest was very great; but he was thin in the flank, and small in the waist; and when his arm hung loosely by his side, the tip of his middle finger reached nearly to his knee. His countenance was a very fine one; the forehead high and broad, but with the brow somewhat prominent above the eyes, giving a keen and eagle-like look to a face in every other respect frank and gentle. His well rounded chin, covered with a short curling beard, of a light brown hue, was rather prominent than otherwise, but all the features were small and in good proportion; and the clear blue eye, with its dark-black eyelashes, and the arching turn of the lip and mouth, gave a merry expression to the whole, rather reckless, perhaps, but open and free, and pleasant to the beholder.

In dress he was very much like the foresters whom we have before described; he wore upon his head a little velvet cap, with a gold button in the front, and a bunch of woodcock\'s feathers therein. He had also an image, either in gold or silver gilt, of St. Hubert on horseback, on the front of the cross-belt in which his sword was hung. The close-fitting coat of Lincoln green, the tight hose of the same, the boots of untanned leather, disfigured by no long points, the sheaf of arrows, the bow, the sword, and bracer, were all there; and, moreover, by his side hung a pouch of crimson cloth called the gipciere, and, resting upon it, a hunting horn, tipped with silver. As the fashion of those days went, his apparel was certainly not rich, but still it was becoming, and had an air of distinction which would have marked him out amongst men more splendidly habited than himself.

Such was the person who stood before the travellers when they looked round, but taken by surprise, none of the party spoke in answer to his question.

"What!" he said, again, with a smile, "as silent as if I had caught you loosing your bow against the king\'s deer in the month of May? I beseech you, fair gentlemen, tell me who you are that ride merry Sherwood at 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 make him give up the wretched girl, and send her back to her father!"

"We cannot do it ourselves," replied the forester, "but we can make others do it. Did you not hear the message I sent to the good old Lord of Monthermer?"

Ralph Harland bent down his eyes with a look of bitter disappointment. "If that be your only hope, it is all in vain," he said; "the Monthermer is linked to the Earl of Ashby by a common cause; and in the great movements of people such as these, the feelings, and even the rights of us lesser men are never heeded. The old Earl, good as he is, will not quarrel with Richard de Ashby for John Greenly\'s daughter, lest it breed a feud between him and the other Lord. There is but cold hope to be found there."

His companion heard him to an end, but with a faint smile upon his countenance. "I asked the Earl of Ashby, too," he said; "perhaps we may do something more with him."

Ralph Harland shook his head. "Not till you have got his neck under your baldrick," he said.

"Perhaps I may have by that time," replied the forester; "I mean," he continued, in a serious tone, "that I may by that time have a hold upon him which will make him use his power to send back this light-o\'-love girl to her father\'s house. I know old John Greenly well, and grieve for him. Once I found shelter with him when I was under the ban of a tyrant, and no one else would give me refuge.--I never forget such things. He is somewhat worldly, it is true; but what host is not? It is a part of their trade; they draw their ale and affection for every guest that comes, the one as readily as another, so that he pay his score. But still the man has not a bad heart, and it will be well-nigh broken by his daughter\'s shame."

"She has broken mine," said Ralph Harland.

"Nay--nay!" replied his companion; "you must think better of all this. You loved her--she has proved false. Forget her--seek another. You will find many as fair."

"Ay," replied Harland, "I shall find many as fair, perhaps fairer; but I shall find none that had my first love--none with whom all the thoughts of my early years were in common--none with whom I have wandered about the fields in boyhood, and gathered spring flowers for our May-day games--none with whom I have listened to the singing of the birds when my own heart was as light and tuneful as theirs--none for whom I have felt all those things which I cannot describe, which are like the dawning of love\'s morning, and which I am sure can never be felt twice over. No--no! those times are past; and I must think of such things no more!"

"It is all true," said Robert of the Lees, "but the same, good youth, is the case with every earthly joy; each day has its pleasure, each year of our life has things of its own. As the spring brings the fruit, and the autumn brings the corn, so every period of man\'s existence has its apportioned good and evil. I have ever found it so, from infancy till this day, now eight-and-thirty years, and you will find it likewise. You will love another--differently, but as well; with less tenderness, but more trust; with less passion, but with more esteem; and you will be happier with her than you would have been with this idle one; for passion dies soon, killing itself with its own food; esteem lives, and strengthens by its own power. Shake not thy head, Ralph. I know it is vain to talk to thee as yet, for sorrow and disappointment blind a man\'s eyes to the future, and he will look at nothing but the past."

"But of the Earl of Ashby," said young Harland, little cheered, to say the truth, by his companion\'s reasoning; "how can you get such a hold of him as will make him constrain his own kinsman to give up his paramour?--Alas! that I should call her so!"

"Take your bridle over your arm," replied the forester; "come with me, and I will tell you more. You want rest, and food, and reflection; but nothing can be done before to-morrow, so we shall have plenty of time to discuss the means, and to arrange the plan."