So passed the night. In the morning a forester came to the friar,
with intelligence that Prince John had been compelled, by the urgency
of his affairs in other quarters, to disembarrass Nottingham Castle
of his royal presence. Our wanderers returned joyfully to their
forest-dominion, being thus relieved from the vicinity of any more
formidable belligerent than their old bruised and beaten enemy
the sheriff of Nottingham.
CHAPTER XVII
Oh! this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bribe
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk.--Cymbeline.
So Robin and Marian dwelt and reigned in the forest, ranging the glades
and the greenwoods from the matins of the lark to the vespers
of the nightingale, and administering natural justice according
to Robin's ideas of rectifying the inequalities of human condition:
raising genial dews from the bags of the rich and idle, and returning
them in fertilising showers on the poor and industrious:
an operation which more enlightened statesmen have happily reversed,
to the unspeakable benefit of the community at large.
The light footsteps of Marian were impressed on the morning dew beside
the firmer step of her lover, and they shook its large drops about them
as they cleared themselves a passage through the thick tall fern,
without any fear of catching cold, which was not much in fashion
in the twelfth century.
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