CHAPTER VI.

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."

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."

CHAPTER VII.

Upon the edge of the merry forest-land, on the side nearest to Derbyshire, not far from the little river Lind, and surrounded at that time by woods which joined the district on to Sherwood itself, there rose, in the days I speak of, a Norman castle of considerable extent. It had been built in the time of William Rufus--had been twice attacked in the turbulent reign of Stephen--had been partly dismantled by order of Henry II.--and had been restored under the dominion of the weak tyrant John. Being not far from Nottingham, it was frequently visited by noble and royal personages, and was often the scene of the splendid and ostentatious hospitality of the old baronage of England.

It has now crumbled down, indeed, and departed; the ploughshare has passed over most of its walls, and the voice of song and merriment is heard in it no more. The lower part of one of the square flanking-towers in the outer wall is all that remains of the once magnificent castle of Lindwell; and a dingly copse, where many a whirring pheasant rises before the sportsman, now covers the hall and the lady's bower.

In the days of which I speak, however, it was in its greatest splendour, having come into the possession of the Earl of Ashby by his father's marriage, and being the favourite dwelling of the race. It was situated upon a gentle eminence, and the great gate commanded a view over some sixty or seventy acres of meadow land, lying between the castle and the nearest point of the wood; and for the distance of nearly three miles on the Sherwood side, though there was no cultivated land--except, indeed, a few detached fields here and there--the ground assumed more the aspect of a wild chase than a forest, with the thick trees grouping together to the extent of an acre or two, and then leaving wide spaces between, as pasture for the deer and other wild animals, only broken by bushes and hawthorns.

This district was properly within the limits of Sherwood; but, as all persons know, who are acquainted with the forest laws, certain individuals frequently possessed private woods in the royal forest, which was the case of the Earl of Ashby in his manor of Lindwell; and, whether or not he had originally any legal right of chase therein, such a privilege had been secured to the manor in the reign of John, by the king's special grant and permission. His rights of vert and venison, then, as they were called, extended over a wide distance around, and it was reported that some disputes had arisen between himself and his sovereign, whether he had not extended the exercise of those rights somewhat beyond their legitimate bounds.

In the same merry month of May, however, of which we have just been writing, and but one day after the occurrences took place which have just occupied our attention, a gay party issued forth from the gates of the castle, and took its way in the direction of Nottingham. We have called it gay, and it was so altogether: gay in colouring, gay in movement, gay in feeling. At the head of it appeared three light-hearted young women, a lady and her two maids, all about the same age, and none of them having as yet numbered twenty years. Their clothing, was rich and glittering; and they were followed by a page, possessing all the requisite qualities for his office in saucy boldness and light self-confidence. Three or four yeomen came next, who, having been left behind while their lord went with numerous attendants upon a distant progress, had necessarily had all the love and the merriment of the lower hall to themselves. The horses which bore the whole party were fresh, proud, and spirited; and never, perhaps, was more brightness of appearance and heart embodied in one group than in that which took its way down from the castle gate and through the meadows below; but we must pause, for a moment upon the fair leader of the cavalcade, for she is worth a short description.

The Earl's daughter, Lucy de Ashby, wanted yet a few months of that period when girlhood may be said to end and womanhood begin; where the teens--which are so longingly looked for by the child--come to their end, and the third ten of the allotted seven begins. Oh, how long do the five tens that are to follow appear, when viewed from the brow of the hill of youth! And yet the two that are gone contain the brightest and the sweetest part of our apportioned time.

Lucy looked not older than her years, for she was small and delicately formed; but yet there was the fulness of womanhood in every line. Her face had not much colour, and yet it was not pale, but the whole hue was warm and healthy, and fairer than that of the southern nations of Europe, though still evidently the complexion of what is now called a brunette. The brow, the nose, the lips, the chin, were all beautifully cut; though the model was not Greek, for the forehead was wider and higher, and there was a slight, a very slight wave in the line between the brow and the nose. The eyebrows were dark, small, and long, slightly depressed in the middle over the eye, but by no means either arched or strongly defined, according to the eastern notions of beauty, but, on the contrary, shaded softly off, so as only to show a definite line to beholders when at a little distance. The eyes beneath them were large and long, but with the deep black eyelashes, which she had derived from her mother, shading them so completely, that the sparkling of the dark iris was only clearly seen when she looked up.

That, however, was often the case; for in her gay liveliness, when she had said some little thing to tease or to surprise, she would still raise the "fringed curtain" of her eye to mark the effect it produced, and to have her smile at anything like astonishment that appeared upon the countenance of those who heard her.

The lip, too, was full of playfulness; for, indeed, sorrow had but sat there once, and tears were very unfrequent in those dark, bright eyes. There had been people seen, perhaps, more beautiful in mere feature, but few more beautiful in expression, and certainly none ever more captivating in grace of movement and in variety of countenance. Her dress was full of gay and shining colours, but yet so well assorted, so harmonious in their contrast, that the effect could not be called gaudy.

The same was not the case with her two women, who, with the pleasant familiarity of those times, were chattering lightly to their mistress as they rode along, upon the ordinary subject of women's thoughts in all ages--alas! I mean dress. There was, on the contrary, a good deal of gaudiness about their apparel, and their taste did not appear to be of the most refined kind.

"Nay, dear lady," said one of them, "I would have put on the robe of arms when I was going to Nottingham to wait for my father. It does look so magnificent, with the escutcheon of pretence for Minorca just on your breast, the silver field on one side, and the azure field on the other, and the beautiful wyverns all in gold."

"I cannot bear it, silly girl," replied the lady; "to hear you talk about wearing the fields, one would suppose that I was a piece of arable land; and as to coats of arms, Judith, I like not this new custom; women have nothing to do with coats of arms. I put it on once to please my brother, but I will never wear it again, so he may cut the skirt off and use it himself next time he goes to a tournament."

"Dear, now, lady, how you jest," replied the girl; "he could never get it on; why, Lord Alured's thigh is thicker than your waist; and I do declare I think it much handsomer than that azure and gold you are so fond of. I would not wear that, at all events."

"And pray, why not?" demanded Lucy de Ashby, with some surprise; "they are the two colours that divide the universe, girl--azure the colour for heaven, gold the only colour for this earth; so between the two I should have all mankind on my side. Why would you not wear them?"

"Because they are the colours of the Monthermers," replied the girl; "and they are old enemies of your house."

"But they are friends now," rejoined Lucy, into whose cheek, to say truth, the blood had come up somewhat warmly. She ventured to say nothing more for a minute or two, and when she did speak again, changed the subject.

The conversation soon resumed its liveliness, however; and thus they rode on, talking of many things, and laughing gaily as they talked, while the yeomen who were behind amused themselves in the same manner.

After about half a mile's ride, they approached nearer to the banks of the little stream, which being every here and there decorated with bushes and tall trees that hung over the water, was sometimes seen glancing through a meadow, and then again lost amongst the thick foliage.

Just as they were entering a closer part of the woodland, and leaving the stream on their right, one of the yeomen exclaimed, "By----!" using an oath of too blasphemous a kind to be even written down in the present age, but which in those days would have been uttered in the court of the king, "By----there is somebody netting the stream. Quick, Jacob, quick! come after them. You, Bill, go round the wood, and catch them on the other side. See, they're running that way--they're running that way!" and setting spurs to their horses, the whole of Lucy's male attendants, with the exception of the page, galloped off as fast as ever they could, shouting and whooping as if they had been in pursuit of some beast of the chase.

Lucy de Ashby paused for a moment, and called to the page, who was the last to leave her, not to go; but the spur had been already given to his horse, and the boy became seized with a sudden deafness which prevented him from hearing a word that the lady uttered. Lucy gazed after them with a thoughtful look for an instant, then laughed, and said--"'Tis a droll fancy that men have to run after everything that flies them."

"Ay, and dogs as well as men," added one of the girls.

"And women as well as both," answered Lucy. "I have more than three quarters of a mind to go myself; but I will not, girls; and so, to be out of the way of temptation, we will ride slowly on."

Thus saying, she shook her rein, and keeping her horse to a walk, followed the road before her into the thicker part of the wood, leaving her truant attendants to come after as they might.

In about a quarter of an hour the first of the men appeared at the spot where they had left her, but he was by no means in the same plight as when he last stood there. His clothes were dripping as well as his hair; there were the marks of severe blows on his face; his smart apparel was soiled and torn, and he was both disarmed and on foot. In short, he looked very much like a man who had been heartily beaten and dragged through a horse-pond. A loud hallo, which reached his ear from the direction of the stream, seemed to visit him with no very pleasant sensations, for he darted in at once amongst the bushes, and hid himself as well as he could for a few minutes. At length, however, two of his comrades appeared; but they seemed to have fared not much better than himself, for though they had preserved their horses, both were in terrible disarray, and had returned from the fray evidently with broken heads.

"Where is Bill?" said one to the other as they came up; "I saw him running this way."

"Poor devil, he got it!" replied his comrade.

"And you got it, too, I think," cried the one who had first appeared, now coming out from amongst the bushes. "Why, I never saw or heard anything like that blow of the staff across your shoulders, Jacob. You echoed like an empty cask under a cooper's hammer."

"Ay, Bill," said the man to whom he spoke, "and when the man bestowed upon you the buffet in the eye, and knocked you down, what a squelch was there! Why, it was for all the world as when the scullion, bringing in the kitchen dinner, let the apple pudding fall, and it burst itself upon the pavement."

"I will be even with him," said the man called Bill; "but where's the page and Walter?"

"They galloped off to the castle as they could," answered the third, "and your horse along with them, so you must go back too, and we must ride after the lady as fast as we can go."

"Pretty figures you are to follow her into Nottingham," rejoined Bill; "and what will my lord say when he finds that we four and the page were beaten by five men on foot?"

"There were more than five," replied the other, "I am sure."

"I thought I saw some in the bushes," added the third.

"Come, come," exclaimed Bill, "there were only five, I was disabled by being knocked into the river, otherwise I would have shewn them a different affair."

"I dare say you'd have done wonders," answered the other, with a sneer; "but we must get on, so you go back to the castle as fast as you can."

"Pr'ythee see me beyond those trees," said the yeoman on foot; "if those fellows are hiding there, they may murder me!"

"We have no time--we have no time!" replied one of the horsemen--"Go along with you! If you hadn't been in the stream, you would have thrashed them all; so thrash them now, good Bill;" and thus saying, the two rode on, for certainly there is no human infirmity, though it is a very contagious one, which meets with such little sympathy as fear.

Onward, then, they went at a quick pace, hoping to catch up their young mistress before she reached Nottingham, but feeling a little ashamed for having left her at all, and not a little ashamed at the result of their expedition.

When they had gone about a couple of miles, however, without seeing anything of Lucy de Ashby, the one looked round to his comrade, and said, "It is odd we haven't come up with her--she must have ridden fast."

"Oh, it is just like her," replied the other, "she has galloped on just to tease us, and punish us a little for having left her in the wood. I would wager a besant that she does not draw a rein till she gets to Nottingham."

"Ay, but the best of it is," rejoined his companion, "that we shall hear no more of it than just, 'Jacob, you should not have quitted me; you should have let the stream take care of itself,' instead of twenty great blustering oaths, such as Lord Alured would have given us. Then it will be all fair weather again in a minute."

"Ay, she is very kind!" said the other yeoman, "and when anything does go wrong, she knows that one did not do it on purpose."

With such conversation, and with praises of their sweet lady, which one may be sure were well deserved, as no ear was there to hear, no tongue to report them, the yeomen rode on; but the one called Jacob did so, it must be confessed, uneasily. His eyes, as he went, were bent down upon the ground, which in that part was soft, searching for the traces of horses' feet, but though he gazed eagerly, he could perceive none, till, at length, they reached the gates of Nottingham, and entering the city, proceeded at once to what was called the lodging of the Lord Ashby. It was, in fact, a large, though low-built house, shut from the street by a court-yard and a high embattled wall. The gates were open, and all the bustle and activity were apparent about the doors, which attended in those days the arrival of a large retinue. There were servants hurrying hither and thither, horse-boys and grooms slackening girths, and taking off saddles, servers and pantlers unpacking baskets and bags, and boys and beggars looking on.

"What, is my lord arrived?" cried one of the men who had followed Lucy, springing from his horse; "we did not expect him till to-night, or to-morrow morning."

"He will be here in half an hour," replied the horse-boy, to whom he addressed himself; "we rode on before."

"What tidings of my young lady?" said a server, walking up; "we thought we should find her here to meet the Earl."

"Is she not arrived?" cried the yeoman who had remained on horseback, in a tone of dismay; "she came on before us--we fancied she was here!"

The one who had dismounted sprang into the saddle again, exclaiming--"This is some infernal plot!"

The story was soon told, and the whole household of the Lord of Ashby, or at least such a part of it as was then in Nottingham, was thrown into a state of confusion indescribable. In the midst of this, some ten or twelve men mounted their horses, though every beast was tired with a long day's journey, and set out to seek for the fair lady who was missing, beating the forest paths in every direction. But not the slightest trace of her could they find; and, after a two hours' search, were coming home again, when, having made a round on the Southwell side, they met the party of the Earl himself, riding slowly on towards Nottingham.

He was accompanied by only four or five attendants, but had with him his son Alured and Hugh de Monthermer, the other Earl having remained behind at Pontefract to settle some business of importance there. It may be easily conceived what indignation and surprise the tidings, brought by the servants, spread amongst the party they thus met. Lord Alured chafed like an angry tiger, and the old lord vowed every kind of vengeance. Hugh de Monthermer's lip quivered, but all he said was, "This is horrible indeed, my lord, that your lordship's daughter cannot ride from Lindwell to Nottingham in safety! What can we do?"

"We!" cried Alured de Ashby. "Hugh of Monthermer, you have little enough to do with it, methinks! What I shall do, will be to cut off the ears of the scoundrels that left their lady on any account, when they were following her to Nottingham."

"My lord of Ashby," said Hugh de Monthermer, addressing the Earl, "I merely used the word we, because, as a gentleman, and your friend, I take as deep an interest in the affair as any one. I and my men are at your command to seek for this lady instantly; and we will strive to do you as good service in the search as the best of your own people, if you will permit us."

"Certainly--certainly, my good lord!" replied the Earl--"Alured, you are rash and intemperate.--Three hours ago, they say, this happened. Should they have taken to the forest, they cannot have gone very far, if they have followed the horse-paths; and were one of us to go back to the second road to the left, where there stands a meer^[1], he must, by beating up those lanes, either come upon the party themselves or find the horses, if they have turned them loose, and taken to the footways."

"They have not gone into the forest," cried Alured de Ashby; "depend upon it, these are some of the king's people, or the bishop's. Better far let us scour the more open country along the banks of Trent. You will soon hear at the bridges whether such persons have passed that way."

"Stand out, Jacob," said the Earl; "you were one of the fools that were misled. What like were these men who lured you from your lady?"

"I think they were men at arms disguised," answered the servant, in a sorrowful and timid tone; "for so well practised were they at their weapons, that they beat us all in the twinkling of an eye; besides, when I struck one of them, I heard something clatter underneath, like armour. The net, too, did not look like a real net."

"It is very clear, the whole was a trick," said the Earl. "I doubt not you are right, Alured, but still we had better spread out, and scour the whole country across. You, with part of the men, take the banks of the Trent--I, with others, will skirt the borders of the forest from Nottingham to Lindwell--and our young friend here, with his own two servants and two of ours, will, perhaps, examine the forest itself from the second turning on the road to Southwell, as far as he may judge it likely, from the time which has elapsed, that these gentry could have advanced. I will send people to meet him when I reach Lindwell, who will tell him what success we have had, and give him aid and assistance."

Alured de Ashby seemed not over well pleased at the arrangement, for his brows still continued heavy, his cheek flushed, and his proud lip quivering; but he made no objection, and after a few words more, the party separated upon the different tracks they proposed to follow, having still three or four hours of daylight before them.

Alured rode on, with his fiery temper chafing at the insult which had been offered to his family, and but the more irritable and impatient because he had no one on whom to vent his anger.

His father pursued his course more slowly, and with very different thoughts. Wrath in the bosom of the son swallowed up every sensation; but the loss of a child, which he had treated but lightly in the case of the innkeeper, now filled the Earl's breast with deep anxiety and apprehension, though certainly poor Greenly had more cause for agonizing fear and sorrow than the proud noble.

It is a curious fact, however, and one which gives a strange indication of the lawless state of the times, that no one imagined the absence of Lucy de Ashby could proceed from any ordinary accident.