The friar rode off alone; and after the foresters had lost sight of him
they heard his voice through the twilight, singing,--
A staff, a staff, of a young oak graff,
That is both stoure and stiff,
Is all a good friar can needs desire
To shrive a proud sheriffe.
And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted so
Of the forester's greenwood game,
Wilt be in no haste thy time to waste
In seeking more taste of the same:
Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well,
Thou hadst better by far be the devil in hell,
Than the sheriff of Nottinghame.
CHAPTER VII
Now, master sheriff, what's your will with me? Henry IV.
Matilda had carried her point with the baron of ranging at liberty
whithersoever she would, under her positive promise to return home;
she was a sort of prisoner on parole: she had obtained this indulgence
by means of an obsolete habit of always telling the truth and keeping
her word, which our enlightened age has discarded with other barbarisms,
but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her,
that he could not help considering her word a better security than
locks and bars.
The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of
the new outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had taken all possible
precautions to keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that
they might cause the interruption of her greenwood liberty;
and it was only during her absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler,
being thrown off his guard by liquor, forgot her injunctions,
and regaled the baron with a long story of the right merry
adventure of Robin Hood and the abbot of Doubleflask.
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