still reddens our cups as they flow? decoction Pour out the <rich juices> still bright with the sun, dye-stuff Till o'er the brimmed crystal the <rubies> shall run. taste sugar of lead How sweet is the <breath> of the <fragrance they shed>! rank poisons _wines!!!_ For summer's <last roses> lie hid in the <wines> scowl howl scoff sneer Then a <smile>, and a <glass>, and a <toast>, and a <cheer>, strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer! For <all the good-wine, and we've some of it here> In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, Now as no stream had been mentioned, I was perplexed to know what it meant. It proved, on inquiry, to be only a misprint for \"dream.\" Think of it! No wonder so many poets die young. Coleridge had already formed a school both of divinity and philosophy. He had his disciples, as well as those far-off gazers who looked upon him with amazement and trembling, not knowing what to make of the phenomenon, or whether to regard him as friend or foe to the old dispensation and the established order of things. He had written books and poems, preached Unitarian sermons, recanted, and preached philosophy and Church-of-Englandism. To the dazzled eyes of all ordinary mortals, content to chew the cud of parish sermons, and swallow, Sunday after Sunday, the articles of common belief, he seemed an eccentric comet. But a better astronomy recognized him as a fixed star, for he was unmistakable by that fitting Few whose verdict is both history and immortality. \"An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry.\" \"This is our little Katy, Cousin Harry,\" said she, leading me towards him. \"Our little Katy's most obedient!\" replied he, taking off his broad-brimmed straw hat, and making a flourishing bow nearly to the ground. \"Don't be afraid of him, Katy dear; he's nobody,\" said my aunt, laughing. Cousin Harry was a very tall, very pale, very black-haired and black-eyed young gentleman, with a high, open brow, and a very fascinating smile. The next day I heard it said that Cousin Harry was gone away. The little rose was brought into the house and installed in the bow-window of my aunt's room, where it was watched and tended by us both with the greatest care. Some time after this, the news came that Cousin Harry was married. The next morning I missed my little favorite from the window. My aunt was reading when I waked. \"Oh, Aunty!\" I cried, \"where is our little rose?\" \"It was too much trouble, Katy,\" said she, quietly; \"I have put it into the garden.\" \"But isn't it going to stand in our window any more?\" \"No, dear, I am tired of it.\" \"Oh, do bring it back! I will take the whole care of it,\" said I, beginning to cry. \"Katy,\" said my aunt, taking me into her lap, and looking steadily, but kindly, into my face, \"listen to me. I do not wish to have that rose in my room any more; and if you love me, you will never mention it again.\" Something in her manner prevented my uttering a word more in behalf of the poor little exile. As soon as I was dressed, I ran down into the garden to visit it. It looked very lonely, I thought; I could hardly bear to leave it. The day following, it disappeared from the garden, and old Nanny, the housemaid, told me that my aunt had given it away. I never saw it again. \"But, Aunty,\" I cried, \"what a horribly prosy, matter-of-fact affair life would be in any other view! I believe poetry itself would become extinct.\" \"Oh, the poor old wretch, with her rags and dirt and gin-bottle! Has she a story?\" \"If you only spoke experimentally, dear Aunty! Oh that Plato, or John Milton, or Sir Philip Sydney would reappear, and lay all his genius and glory at your feet! I wonder if you'd be of the same mind then!\" \"But let me hear; there's some spice of poetry in it, I know.\" \"But could I have seen him? Did I arrive before he had left?\" \"Oh, yes, very likely; but of course you can have no recollection of him, such a chit as you were then.\" \"What was his name?\" I cried, eagerly. A long-silent chord of memory began to give forth a vague, uncertain murmur. \"Oh, no matter, Kate. I would a little rather you shouldn't know. It doesn't affect the moral of the story, which was all I had in view in relating it.\" \"A plague take the moral, Aunty! The romance is what I want; and what's that without 'the magic of a name'?\" \"Cousin Harry!\" I screamed, starting forward, and staring at her with eyes wide open. \"Yes; but what ails you, child? You glare upon me like a maniac.\" \"Hush! hush! don't speak!\" said I. \"What, Kate?\" said Aunt Linny, now opening her large blue eyes with a strange look. \"Did you give away the flower-pot too? That was so pretty! Whom did you give it to?\" \"Incredible!\" she exclaimed, coloring, and with the strongest expression of surprise. \"Truly, little pitchers have not been slandered!\" \"But the wonderful humming-bird, Aunty! What had that to do with it?\" \"Even so, Katy!\" she replied, quietly; \"and to that early disappointment I owe more than to anything that ever befell me.\" She said this with a smile; but her voice trembled a little, and I perceived that a soft dew had gathered over her eyes. By an irresistible impulse I rose, and stealing softly behind her, clasped my arms round her neck, and kissing her forehead whispered, \"Forgive me, sweet Aunty!\" \"Not a bit of harm, Katy,\" she replied, drawing me down for a warm kiss. \"But what a gypsy you must be,\" she added, in her usually lively tone, \"to have trudged along so many years with this precious little bundle, and said never a word to anybody!\" \"I've not thought of it myself, these ever so many years,\" said I, \"and it seems like witchwork that it should all have come to me at this moment.\" \"But stay a moment,\" said I; \"let me fetch our garden bonnets, that we may enjoy it in the very scene of the romance.\" \"Did you know anything of the young lady?\" \"But what base conduct towards you!\" \"But why, then, did he cease to write? why not share his new happiness with so dear a friend?\" \"That was not unnatural, after what he had said of the young lady's deficiencies. Probably the awkwardness of the thing led him to defer writing from time to time, till he had become so absorbed in his domestic relations and his business, that he had ceased to think of it. Life's early dewdrops often exhale in that way, Kate!\" \"Then life is a hateful stupidity!\" \"Well, let me hear how you were inured.\" \"Do so, Kate, and your good angel will doubtless inspire in me a suitable response.\" \"But tell me now, Aunt Linny, who the living man was. Was he a real cousin?\" \"I may as well tell you, Kate, or you will get it from your 'familiar.' You have heard of our rich cousin in Cuba, Henry Morrison?\" \"I should have waked you before, Katy,\" said she, \"if you had not seemed to be enjoying yourself so much. Come, unfold your dream. I presume it will save me the trouble of telling you the contents of this wonderful epistle which I hold in my hand.\" \"It's from Cousin Harry! Huzza!\" cried I, springing up to snatch it. But she held it out of my reach. \"Softly! good Mistress Fortuneteller,\" said she. \"Read me the letter without seeing it, and then I shall know that you can tell the interpretation thereof.\" \"The hateful, prosy man! I'll not do anything to make his visit agreeable,\" said I, pettishly. \"Why, Kate, what are you conjuring up in your foolish little noddle?\" \"Oh, I supposed an _eclaircissement_ would come round somehow, and we should finish the romance in style.\" \"Why, Kate, do you really wish to get rid of me?\" \"See you aught, Sister Annie?\" called my aunt from below. \"You are right, Kate, it must be he,\" said she, glancing through the window, and then following me quietly down stairs. \"But, cousin,\" said she, smiling, \"what gem have you there, hidden in the carriage, too precious to be seen? We have a place in our hearts for the fair stranger, I assure you.\" \"Ah, poor thing! I had quite forgotten her,\" said he, coloring and laughing, as he turned towards the carriage. \"Permit me,\" said he, smiling, \"to present Miss Caroline Morrison, 'sole daughter of my house and heart.'\" \"But the stranger, the foreign lady?\" inquired Aunt Linny, as she kissed and welcomed the child. \"We expected a lady with a few more years on her head,\" interposed grandpapa; \"but the little pet is just as welcome. There, Katy, this curly-pate will answer as well as a wax doll for you.\" The dear old gentleman could never realize that I was grown up to be a woman. Of course, I was now introduced in due form, and we went together up the steps. \"How could I forget?\" was the answer, in a low tone, full of feeling, his own eyes filling with moisture. \"My dear aunt! I shed many tears with and for you, when I heard of her death.\" He looked extremely amiable at this moment; I knew that I should love him. \"It used to be my name,\" said the little smiler; \"but papa always calls me Linny now, because he thinks it sweeter.\" \"What say you to the humming-bird now?\" I whispered to my aunt, as we were a moment alone in the tea-room. \"But I may give you just a look, now and then?\" \"Do you wish me to repent having trusted you, Kate?\" \"Nonsense! Go, call them to tea.\" \"What is that remark of Byron about young ladies' friendship? Take care, take care!\" said I, shaking my head, gravely; \"receive the warning of a calm observer!\" At the end of the week our kinsman left us for a fortnight's visit to the metropolis. Intending to give us a call on his return south, he willingly complied with our desire to leave his little girl with us. As we were sitting together in my aunt's room after his departure, the child brought her a small packet which her father had intrusted to her. \"I believe,\" said the little smiler, \"he said it was a story for you to read. Won't you please to read it to me?\" She took it with a look of surprise and curiosity, and immediately opened it and began to read. But her color soon began to vary, her hand trembled, and presently laying down the sheets in her lap, she sat lost in thought. \"It seems a moving story!\" I remarked, dryly. She left the room, and I heard the key turn in the lock as she entered another chamber. In about an hour she came out very composedly, and said nothing more on the subject. After our little guest was asleep at night, I could restrain myself no longer. \"You are treating me shabbily, aunty,\" said I. \"See if I am ever a good girl again to please you!\" \"But where is the nosegay, aunty?\" With a beautiful flush, as if the sunset of that vanished day were reddening the sky of memory, she drew a small packet from her bosom, and in it I found a withered rose-bud tied up with a shrivelled sprig of mignonette. I am afraid that my Aunt Linny's answer was a great deal more proper than I should have wished; and yet, with all its emphatic expressions of duty towards her father and the impossibility of leaving him, there must have been something between the lines which I could not read. I have since discovered that all such epistles have their real meaning concealed in some kind of more rarefied sympathetic ink, which betrays itself only under the burning hands of a lover. \"So, then,\" said Aunt Linny, as she was sealing this letter, \"you see, Katy, that your romance has come to an untimely end.\" I turned round her averted face with both my hands, and looked in her eyes till she blushed and laughed in spite of herself. \"My knowledge of symptoms is not large,\" said I, \"but I have a conviction that his health will now endure a northern climate.\" \"Let's talk no more of this!\" said she, putting me aside with a gentle gravity, which checked my nonsense. But as I was unable to detect in her, on this or the following day, the slightest depression of spirits, I shrewdly guessed that our anticipations of the result were not very dissimilar. \"Well, you will allow that it's a great paradox, aunty! If you believe in my doctrine, it turns out a mere delusion; if you don't believe in it, 'tis sure to come true.\" OUR BIRDS, AND THEIR WAYS. Among our summer birds, the vast majority are but transient visitors, born and bred far to the northward, and returning thither every year. The North, then, is their proper domicile, their legal \"place of residence,\" which they have never renounced, but only temporarily desert, for special reasons. Their sojourn with us, or farther south, is merely an exile by stress of climate, like the flitting of the Southern planters from the rice-fields to the mountains in summer, or the pleasure tour or watering-place visit customary with the citizens of Boston and New York. The blue jay is a near relative of the crow, and, like him, omnivorous, harsh-voiced, predaceous, a robber of birds' nests; so that if you hear the robins during their nesting-time making an unusual clamor about the house, the chances are you will get a glimpse of this brilliant marauder, sneaking away with a troop of them in pursuit. His usual voice is a harsh scream, but he has some low flute-like notes not without melody. The presence of a hawk, or more particularly an owl in the woods, is often made known by the screaming of the jays, who flock together about him with ever-increasing noise, like a troop of jackals about a lion, pressing in upon him closer and closer in a paroxysm of excitement, while the owl, thus taken at disadvantage, sidles along his bough seeking concealment, and at length softly flaps off to some more undisturbed retreat. This winter activity of the birds ought to be taken into account by those who accuse them of mischief-doing in summer. In winter, at least, no mischief can be done; there is no fruit to steal; and even sap-sucking, if such a practice at any time be not altogether fabulous, certainly cannot be carried on now. Nothing can be destroyed now except the farmer's enemies, or at best neutrals. Yet the birds keep at work all the time. In the spring they come in greater numbers, and other species arrive: the great saddle-back, from the similarity of coloring almost to be mistaken for the white-headed eagle, as he sits among the broken ice at the edge of the channel; and the beautiful little Bonaparte's gull. The ducks, too, still resort to our rivermouth, in spite of the railroads and the tall chimneys by which their old feeding-grounds are surrounded. As long as the channel is open, you may see the golden-eyes, or \"whistlers,\" in extended lines, visible only as a row of bright specks, as their white breasts rise and fall on the waves; and farther than you can see them, you may hear the whistle of their wings as they rise. Spring and fall the \"black ducks\" still come to find the brackish waters which they like, and to fill their crops with the seeds of the eel-grass and the mixed food of the flats. In the late twilight you may sometimes catch sight of a flock speeding in, silent and swift, over the Mill-dam, or hear their sonorous quacking from their feeding-ground. The sea keeps its own climate, and keeps its highways open, after all on the land is shut up by frost. The sea-birds, accordingly, seem to lead an existence more independent of latitude and of seasons. In midwinter, when the seashore watering-places are forsaken by men, you may find Nahant or Nantasket Beach more thronged with bipeds of this sort than by the featherless kind in summer. The Long Beach of Nahant at that season is lined sometimes by an almost continuous flock of sea-ducks, and a constant passing and repassing are kept up between Lynn Bay and the surf outside. If the close of this revolt be not stained with retaliating cruelties, if English soldiers remember mercy, then the whole history of this time will be a proud addition to the annals of England. For though it will display the incompetency and the folly of her governments, it will show how these were remedied by the energy and spirit of individuals; it will tell of the daring and gallantry of her men, of their patient endurance, of their undaunted courage, and it will tell, too, with a voice full of tears, of the sorrows, and of the brave and tender hearts, and of the unshaken religious faith supporting them to the end, of the women who died in the hands of their enemies. The names of Havelock and Lawrence will be reckoned in the list of England's worthies, and the story of the garrison of Cawnpore will be treasured up forever among England's saddest and most touching memories. \"It is said that Nadir Shah, during the massacre that he had commanded, sat in gloomy silence in the little mosque of Rokn-u-doulah, which stands at the present day in the Great Bazaar. Here the Emperor and his nobles at length took courage to present themselves. They stood before him with downcast eyes, until Nadir commanded them to speak, when the Emperor burst into tears and entreated Nadir to spare his subjects.\"] SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE. Body of turkey, head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Captain Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain: \"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!\" Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang: \"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!\" Sweetly along the Salem road Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. Little the wicked skipper knew Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. Riding there in his sorry trim, Like an Indian idol glum and grim, Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear Of voices shouting far and near: \"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women o' Morble'ead!\" SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY. We pray to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is anything good in you. Dante was very bad company, and was never invited to dinner. Michel Angelo had a sad, sour time of it. The ministers of beauty are rarely beautiful in coaches and saloons. Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself. Yet each of these potentates saw well the reason of his exclusion. Solitary was he? Why, yes; but his society was limited only by the amount of brain Nature appropriated in that age to carry on the government of the world. \"If I stay,\" said Dante, when there was question of going to Rome, \"who will go? and if I go, who will stay?\" Put any company of people together with freedom for conversation, and a rapid self-distribution takes place into sets and pairs. The best are accused of exclusiveness. It would be more true to say, they separate as oil from water, as children from old people, without love or hatred in the matter, each seeking his like; and any interference with the affinities would produce constraint and suffocation. All conversation is a magnetic experiment. I know that my friend can talk eloquently; you know that he cannot articulate a sentence: we have seen him in different company. Assort your party, or invite none. Put Stubbs and Byron, Quintilian and Aunt Miriam, into pairs, and you make them all wretched. 'Tis an extempore Sing-Sing built in a parlor. Leave them to seek their own mates, and they will be as merry as sparrows. \"I like her well enough to hope she'll stay, mum,\" quoth he, in reply to an inquisitive neighbor. \"And for my part, Miss Prouty,\" he added, nodding and winking at his questioner, \"I'd like to see it fixed so she'd alwus stay; and if the Doctor _doos_ think he can't do no better'n to have her bimeby, when the time comes, who's a right to say a word agin it?\" \"Pray, what have you got such a spite against the Jayneses for?\" asked Cornelia. \"But you don't like Mrs. Jaynes,\" persisted Cornelia. \"But why don't you like her, Tira?\" asked Helen. \"Good!\" said little Helen; \"hurrah for Aunt Eunice!\" \"And what did Mrs. Jaynes say?\" asked little Helen, when Tira finally came to a pause. \"But you ought not to blame Laura because her sister affronted you,\" said Helen. \"Oh, thank you, thank you!\" cried Laura, with such a burst of passionate emotion that Miss Blake's eyes watered at the sight of it. \"My dear, dear, dear good friend! you don't know how glad I shall be, if you will let me do as you say, and tell me what to do, and scold me, and admonish and warn me! Oh, it will be such happiness to have somebody to tell all my _real_ secrets and troubles to! I do so need such a friend sometimes!\" \"Don't I know it, you poor dear?\" said Miss Blake, wiping her eyes. \"Ha'n't I been through the same straits myself? None but them that's been a young gal themselves, an orphan without a mother to confide in and to warn and guide 'em, knows what it is. But I do, my dear; and though I shall be a pretty poor substitute for an own mother, I'll do the best I can.\" \"Oh, I shall never have any such secrets,\" said Laura, blushing; \"my sister never lets the beaux come to see me, you know. I'm going to be an old maid.\" \"Well, perhaps you will be,\" said Miss Blake; \"only they gen'ally don't make old maids of such lookin' girls as you be.\" When this speech of his housekeeper came to the Doctor's ears, he expressed so warm an approval of its sentiments, that several who heard him began to be confirmed in suspicions they had previously entertained, the nature of which may be inferred from a remark which Mrs. Prouty confided to the ear of a trusty friend and crony. \"Now do you mind what I say, Miss Baker,\" said she, shaking her snuffy forefinger in Mrs. Baker's face; \"Doctor Bugbee'll marry Tira Blake yet. Now do you just stick a pin there.\" [To be continued in the next Number.] MY PORTRAIT GALLERY. As the observation of nature has extended, and as mankind have approached the state of only _semi_-barbarism in which they now exist, there has been an improvement. The materia medica has been weeded; much that was worthless and revolting has been thrown overboard; simplicity has been introduced into prescriptions; and the whole business of _drugging_ the sick has undergone a most salutary reform. The great fact has been practically recognized, that the movements of life in disease obey laws which, under the circumstances, are on the whole salutary, and only require a limited and occasional interference by any special disturbing agents. The list of specifics has been reduced to a very brief catalogue, and the delusion which had exaggerated the power of drugging for so many generations has been tempered down by sound and systematic observation. \"Paris, la cour, le monde, l'univers,\" is a gospel down to this day; and no country can so justly complain of being constantly misunderstood and misrepresented by French tourists as ours. The more difficult it is for a Frenchman not to glance through spectacles from the Palais Royal at whatever does not belong to \"the Great Nation,\" the more praise those few of them deserve who give to the world correct and impartial impressions of travel and reliable ethnological works. Trees, that from winter's gray eclipse Of late but pushed their topmost plume, Or felt with green-touched finger-tips For spring, their perfect robes assume. While, vague no more, the mountains stand With quivering line or hazy hue; But drawn with finer, firmer, hand, And settling into deeper blue. From his cold nest the skylark springs; Sings, pauses, sings; shoots up anew; Attains his topmost height, and sings Quiescent in his vault of blue. Brow-bound with myrtle and with gold, Spring, sacred now from blasts and blights, Lifts in a firm, untrembling hold Her chalice of fulfilled delights. Confirmed around her queenly lip The smile late wavering, on she moves; And seems through deepening tides to step Of steadier joys and larger loves. When all the breathless woods aloof Lie hushed in noontide's deep repose The dove, sun-warmed on yonder roof, With what a grave content she coos! All day with down-dropt lids I sat In trance; the present scene foregone. When Hesper rose, on Ararat, Methought, not English hills, he shone. Back to the Ark, the waters o'er, The primal dove pursued her flight: A branch of that blest tree she bore Which feeds the Church with holy light."},"source":{"kind":"string","value":"redpajama-book"},"token_estimate":{"kind":"number","value":11965,"string":"11,965"}}},{"rowIdx":93,"cells":{"text":{"kind":"string","value":"E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Tam, Tom Allen, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE FAITH OF THE MILLIONS A SELECTION OF PAST ESSAYS GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J. _Nil Obstat:_ J. GERARD, S.J. CENS. THEOL. DEPUTATUS. _Imprimatur:_ HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN, ARCHIEP. WESTMON. It is, however, not only to these occasional obscurities and ambiguities that we are to ascribe the comparative oblivion into which so remarkable a book has fallen; but also to the fact that its noteworthiness is perhaps more evident and relative to us than to our forefathers. It cannot but startle us to find doubts that we hastily look upon as peculiarly \"modern,\" set forth in their full strength and wrestled with and overthrown by an unlettered recluse of the fourteenth century. In some sense they are the doubts of all time, with perhaps just that peculiar complexion which they assume in the light of Christianity. Yet, owing to the modern spread of education, or rather to the indiscriminate divulgation of ideas, these problems are now the possession of the man in the street, whereas in former days they were exclusively the property of minds capable--not indeed of answering the unanswerable, but at least of knowing their own limitations and of seeing why such problems must always exist as long as man is man. Dark as the age of Mother Juliana was as regards the light of positive knowledge and information; yet the light of wisdom burned at least as clearly and steadily then as now; and it is by that light alone that the shades of unbelief can be dispelled. Of course, wisdom without knowledge must starve or prey on its own vitals, and this was the intellectual danger of the middle ages; but knowledge without wisdom is so much food undigested and indigestible, and this is the evil of our own day, when to be passably well-informed so taxes our time and energy as to leave us no leisure for assimilating the knowledge with which we have stuffed ourselves. It is not then so wonderful that this wise and holy woman should have faced the problems presented by the apparent discord between the truths of faith and the facts of human life--a discord which is felt in every age by the observant and thoughtful, but which in our age is a commonplace on the lips of even the most superficial. But an age takes its tone from the many who are the children of the past, rather than from the few who are the parents of the future. Mother Juliana's book could hardly have been in any sense \"popular\" until these days of ours, in which the particular disease of mind to which it ministers has become epidemic. Having thus sketched the circumstances of the revelations, we may now address ourselves to their character and substance. Perhaps the similarity of the phenomena which attend both on extraordinary psychic weakness and passivity, and on extraordinary energy and activity may excuse a confusion common enough, and which we have dwelt on elsewhere. But obviously as far as the natural consequences of a given psychic state are concerned, it is indifferent how that state is brought about. Thus, that extreme concentration of the attention, that perfect abstraction from outward things, which in hysterical persons is the effect of weakness and passive-mindedness--of the inability to resist and shake off the spell of passions and emotions; is in others the effect of active self-control, of voluntary concentration, of a complete mastery over passions and emotions. Yet though the causes of the abnormal state are different, its effects may well be the same. But to determine, with respect to these and kindred revelations, how far they may be regarded as an expression of the recipient's own mind and latent consciousness, will need a digression which the general interest of the question must excuse. There is a tendency in the modern philosophy of religion (for example, in Mr. Balfour's _Foundations of Belief_) to rationalize inspired revelation and to explain it as altogether kindred to the apparently magical intuitions of natural genius in non-religious matters; as the result, in other words, of a rending asunder of the veil that divides what is called \"super-liminal\" from \"subliminal\" consciousness; to find in prophecy and secret insight the effect of a flash of unconscious inference from a mass of data buried in the inscrutable darkness of our forgotten self. Together with this, there is also a levelling-up philosophy, a sort of modernized ontologism, which would attribute all natural intuition to a more immediate self-revelation on God's part than seems quite compatible with orthodoxy. Saints and contemplatives are wont--not without justification--to speak of their lights in prayer, and of the ordinary intuitions of their mind, under the influence of grace, as Divine utterances in a secondary sense; to say, \"God said to me,\" or \"seemed to say to me,\" or \"God showed me,\" and so on. But to confound these products of their own mind with revelation is the error only of the uninstructed or the wilfully self-deluded. Therefore, as commonly understood, \"revelation\" implies the conscious control of the mind by another mind; just as its usual correlative, \"inspiration,\" implies the conscious control of the will by another will. There can be no doubt whatever but that Mother Juliana of Norwich considered her revelations to be of this latter description, and not to have been merely different in degree from those flashes of spiritual insight with which she was familiar in her daily contemplations and prayers. How far, then, her own mind may have supplied the material from which the tissues were woven, or lent the colours with which the pictures were painted, or supplied the music to which the words were set, is what we must now try to determine. With regard to the will, it is a commonplace of mystical theology that God, who gave it its natural and essential bent towards the good of reason, i.e., towards righteousness and the Divine will; who created it not merely as an irresistible tendency towards the happiness and self-realization of the rational subject, but as a resistible tendency towards its _true_, happiness and _true_ self-realization--that this same God can directly modify the will without the natural mediation of some suggested thought. We ourselves, by the laborious cultivation of virtue, gradually modify the response of our will to certain suggestions, making it more sensitive to right impulses, more obtuse to evil impulses. According to mystic theology, it is the prerogative of God to dispense with this natural method of education, and, without violating that liberty of choice (which no inclination can prejudice), to incline the rational appetite this way or that; not only in reference to some suggested object, but also without reference to any distinct object whatsoever, so that the soul should be abruptly filled with joy or sadness, with fear or hope, with desire or aversion, and yet be at a loss to determine the object of these spiritual passions. St. Ignatius Loyola, in his \"Rules for Discerning Spirits,\" borrowed no doubt from the current mystical theology of his day, makes this absence of any suggested object a criterion of \"consolation\" coming from God alone--a criterion always difficult to apply owing to the lightning subtlety of thoughts that flash across the soul and are forgotten even while their emotional reverberation yet remains. Where there was a preceding thought to account for the emotion, he held that the \"consolation\" might be the work of spirits (good or evil) who could not influence the will directly, but only indirectly through the mind; or else it might be the work of the mind itself, whose thoughts often seem to us abrupt through mere failure of self-observation. In these and like instances, we find will-movements not caused by the subjects' own cognitions and perceptions, but contrariwise, giving birth to cognitions, setting the mind to work to interpret the said movements, and to seek out their satisfying objects. Turning now to \"revelation\" in the stricter sense of a preternatural enlightenment of the mind, it might conceivably be either by way of a real accretion of knowledge--an addition to the contents of the mind--or else by way of manipulating contents already there, as we ourselves do by reminiscence, by rumination, comparison, analysis, inference. Thus we can conceive the mind being consciously controlled in these operations, as it were, by a foreign will; being reminded of this or that; being shown new consequences, applications, and relations of truths already possessed. Now from all this tedious division and sub-division it may perhaps be clear in how many different senses the words of such a professed revelation as Mother Juliana has left on record can be regarded as preternatural utterances; or rather, in how many different ways she herself may have considered them such, and wished them so to be considered. Indeed, as we shall see, she has done a good deal more to determine this, in regard to the various parts of her record, than most have done, and it is for that reason that we have taken the opportunity to open up the general question. Such a record might then be, either wholly or in part: (a) The work of religious \"inspiration\" or genius, in the sense in which rationalists use the word, levelling the idea down to the same plane as that of artistic inspiration. (b) Or else it might be \"inspired\" as mystic philosophy or ontologism uses the expression, when it ascribes all natural insight to a more or less directly divine enlightenment. (d) Or, the matter being in no way from preternatural sources, the strong and perhaps irresistible impulse to record and publish it, might be preternatural. (e) Or (in addition to or apart from such an impulse), it might be a record of certain truths already contained implicitly in the writer's mind, but brought to remembrance or into clear recognition, not by the ordinary free activity of reason, but, as it were, by an alien will controlling the mind. (f) Or, if really new truths or facts are communicated to the mind from without, this may be effected in various ways: (i) By the way of verbal \"inspiration,\" as when the very words are received apparently through the outer senses; or else put together in the imagination. (ii) Or, the matter is presented pictorially (be it fact or symbol) to the outer senses or to the imagination; and then described or \"word-painted\" according to the writer's own ability. (iii) Or, the truth is brought home directly to the intelligence; and gets all its imaginative and verbal clothing from the recipient. Just as in the setting forth of these spiritual apprehensions, the words and imagery are usually her own, so in the description of bodily vision she uses her own language and comparisons. For example, the following realism: \"The great drops of blood fell down from under the garland like pellets, seeming as it had come out of the veins; and in coming out they were brown red, for the Blood was full thick, and in spreading abroad they were bright red The plenteousness is like to drops of water that fall off the eavings after a great shower of rain And for roundness they were like to the scales of herrings in the spreading of the forehead,\" &c. These similes, she tells us, \"came to my mind in the time.\" In other instances, the comparisons and illustrations of what she saw with her eyes or with her understanding, were suggested to her; so that she received the expression, as well as the matter expressed, from without. Rarely, however, are the different modes so entangled as here, and for the most part we have little difficulty in discerning the precise origin to which she wishes her utterances to be attributed--a fact that makes her book an unusually interesting study in the theory of inspiration. The more I consider the subject of the marriage of the Blessed Virgin, the more clearly I see that it is the _one_ absolutely lovely and perfect subject for poetry. Perfect humanity, verging upon, but never entering the breathless region of the Divinity, is the real subject of _all_ true love-poetry; but in all love-poetry hitherto, an \"ideal\" and not a reality has been the subject, more or less. It was, at all events, the predominance of this conception which bound together his whole life's work, rendering coherent and individualizing all which he thought, wrote, or uttered, and those who study Patmore without this key are little likely to understand him. And it is the persistent and not always sufficiently restrained use of this category that made much of his writing just a trifle shocking to sensitive minds. To their infidelity to this contract he ascribes the subsequent degradation of human love through sensuality; and all the sin and selfishness thence deriving to our fallen race: Whom nothing succour can Until a heaven-caress'd and happier Eve Be joined with some glad Saint In like espousals, blessed upon Earth, And she her fruit forth bring; No numb chill-hearted shaken-witted thing, 'Plaining his little span. But of proud virgin joy the appropriate birth, The Son of God and Man. It would not perhaps be hard to reconcile this view with some utterances in the Gospel of seemingly opposite import; or to find it often implied in the words and actions of Catholic Saints; but to square it with the general ascetic traditions of the faithful at large is exceedingly difficult. Patmore would no doubt have allowed the expediency of celibacy in the case of men and women devoted to the direct ministry of good works, spiritual and corporal: a devotion incompatible with domestic cares; he could and did allow the superiority of voluntary virginity and absolute chastity over the contrary state of lawful use; but he could hardly have justified--hardly not have condemned those who leave father, friend, or spouse, not merely externally in order to be free for good works, but internally in order that their hearts may be free for the contemplation and love of God viewed apart from creatures and not merely in them. He might perhaps say that, as we cannot go to God through all creatures, but only through some (since we are not each in contact with all), we must select according to our circumstances those which will give the greatest expansion and elevation to our natural affections; and that for some, the home is wisely sacrificed for the community or the church. Yet this hardly consists with the pre-eminence he gives to married love as the nearest symbol and sacrament of divine. Both these modes of imagining the truth, whatever their inconveniences, are helpful as imperfect formulations of Catholic instinct; both mischievous, if viewed as adequate and close-fitting explanations. Patmore was characteristically enthusiastic for his own aspect of the truth; and characteristically impatient of the other. Thus, of a Kempis he says: There is much that is quite unfit for, and untrue of, people who live in the ordinary relations of life. I don't think I like the book quite so much as I did. There is a hot-house, egotistical air about much of its piety. Other persons are, ordinarily, the appointed means of learning the love of God; and to stifle human affections must be very often to render the love of God impossible. As a convert, Patmore is most uninteresting to the controversialist. His mind was altogether concrete, affirmative, and synthetic, with a profound distrust of abstract and analytical reasoning. As we have said, Christianity and, later, Catholicism appealed profoundly to his intellectual imagination in virtue of some of their deeper tenets, for whose sake he took over all the rest _per modum unius_. The idea [of the Incarnation] no sooner flashed upon me as a possible reality than it became, what it has ever since remained, the only reality worth seriously caring for; a reality so clearly seen and possessed that the most irrefragable logic of disproof has always affected me as something trifling and irrelevant. Of the efforts of Manning and de Vere to proselytize him, he says: It may well be that this judicial impartiality may meet with its usual reward of pleasing neither side altogether. Some will complain that she brings no idealizing love to her subject, and does little to bring out the greatness and glory of her religion. Yet this would be a hasty and ill-judging criticism; for our faith is no less to be commended for the restraint it exercises over the multitude of ordinary men and women, than for the effect it produces in souls of a naturally heroic type. That it should bring a certain largeness into the smallest life, that it should impart a strange stability to a naturally unstable and frivolous character; that it should check the worldly-minded with a sense of the superior claims of the other world--all this impresses us, if not with the sublimity or mystic beauty, at least with the solid reality and penetrating power of the Catholic faith. The most loyal and deep-seated love needs not to shut its eyes to all defects and limitations, but can face them unchilled; and similarly there is often more faith and reverence and quiet enthusiasm in this seemingly cold and critical attitude towards the cause or party we love, than in the extravagant idealism that depends for its maintenance on an ignoring of things as they are. Nothing perhaps is more unintelligible to the Protestant critic of Catholicism, nothing more needs to be brought out prominently, than the firm hold our religion can exercise over souls that are naturally irreligious. This very phrase \"naturally irreligious\" will fall with a shock on sensitive Protestant ears; yet we use it advisedly. While all men are capable of faith and of substantial fidelity to the law of God, it is undeniable that but few are by natural inclination \"religious\" in the common acceptation of the term. As there is a poetic or mystical temperament, so also there is a religious temperament--not quite so rare, but still something exceptional. We find it so in all ages, ancient and modern; in all religions, Christian and non-Christian--nay, even amid agnostics and unbelievers we often detect the now aimless, unused faculty. But most men have, naturally, no ardent spiritual sympathy with holiness, or mysticism, or heroism; their interests are elsewhere; and even where there are latent capacities of that kind, they are not usually developed until life's severest lessons have been learnt. Thus the young, who have just left the negative faith and innocence of the nursery behind them and stand inexperienced on the threshold of life, are not normally religious; whereas we naturally expect those who have passed through the ordeal, and been disillusioned, to begin to think about their souls, since there is nothing else left to think about. Protestantism of the Calvinistic or Puritan type shows little consciousness of the distinction we are insisting upon. It is disposed to draw a hard-and-fast line between the \"converted\" and the reprobate. Those who are not religious-minded, or who do not take a serious turn, are scarcely recognized as \"saved\" although they may not be convicted of any very flagrant or definite breach of the divine law. Their morality or their \"good works\" go for little if they do not experience that sense of goodness, or of being saved, which is called faith. Much stress is laid on \"feeling good\" and little value allowed to what we might call an unsympathetic and grudging keeping of God's law--however much more it may cost, from the very fact that it is in some way unsympathetic, and against the grain. The service of fear and reverence, which Catholicism regards as the basis and back-bone of love, is held to be abject and unworthy--almost sinful. Hence it befalls that no place is found in the Protestant heaven for the great majority of ordinary people who do not feel a bit good or religious, who rather dislike going to church and keeping the commandments, and yet who keep them all the same, because they believe in God and fear His judgments and honour His law, and even love Him in the solid, undemonstrative way in which a naughty and troublesome child loves its parents. Thus it is that the Church reckons among her obedient children thousands of very imperfect and non-religious people for whom Protestantism can find no place among the elect. To those for whom the lawfulness of re-marriage for an innocent divorcee is, like the rest of their religious beliefs, a matter of opinion, the scruple of a character like Madge Riversdale is unthinkable and incredible. Such women do not trouble their heads about theological points; still less, make heroic sacrifices for their private and peculiar convictions. But those for whom the Church is a definite concrete reality--almost a person--governing and teaching with divine authority, will easily understand the firm grip she can and does exert on those who have no other internal principle of restraint; who would shake themselves free if they dared. Let those who despise the results of such a constraint be consistent and abolish all parental and tutorial control; all educative government of whatsoever description; nay, the imperious restraint of conscience itself, which is often obeyed but grudgingly. While some features of this portrait of Catholic life are common to all its phases, others are peculiar to the aspect it presents in England, where Catholics being a small and weak minority are, so to say, self-conscious in their faith--continually aware that they are not as the rest of men; disposed therefore to be apologetic or aggressive or defensive. Again, the circumstance of their long exclusion from the social and intellectual life of their country is accountable for other undesirable peculiarities which Mrs. Wilfrid Ward sees no reason to spare. A LIFE OF DE LAMENNAIS. It is not our purpose here to summarize Mr. Gibson's admirable work, or to give even an outline of so well-known a history; but rather to attempt some brief criticism of the man himself, and incidentally of his views. Had he possessed that intellectual patience in perplexity, without which not only faith, but true science, is impossible, he would have been driven not to apostasy, but to a careful re-sifting of his views, issuing, perhaps, in a reconciliation of apparently adverse positions, or at all events in a confession of subjective, uncertainty and confusion. Faith, in the wider sense of the word, would have bid him to believe, without seeing, what we have lived to see under Leo XIII. It is vain to contend that he was not a man of prayer. That he had a keen discernment in spiritual things is evident from his _Commentary on the Imitation_ and his other spiritual writings, as well as from the testimony of his young disciples at La Chenaie, to whom he was not merely a brilliant teacher, a most affectionate friend and father, but also a trusted guide in the things of God. Yet this would be little had we not also assurance of his personal and private devoutness. LIPPO, THE MAN AND THE ARTIST. As most of the useful arts perfect man's executive faculties, and thus are said to improve upon, while in a certain sense they imitate nature; so the fine arts extend and exalt man's faculty of expression, or self-utterance, regarded not precisely as useful and _propter aliud_; but as pleasurable and _propter se_. Even the most uncultivated savage finds pleasure in some discordant utterance of his subjective frame of mind; and it is really hard to find any tribe so degraded as to show no rudiment of fine art, no sign of reflex pleasure in expression, and of inventiveness in extending the resources nature has provided us with for that end. THROUGH ART TO FAITH. That his works have commanded attention, and awakened keen interest among members of the most varying and opposite schools of thought, is an undeniable fact which at all events proves them to be worth careful consideration. But what will give most offence, and tend to alienate a certain amount of intelligent and valuable sympathy, is the violence, and even the coarseness, with which the author, or at least his hero, handles, not only the opinions, but the very persons of those from whom he differs; the intemperance of his invective, the narrow intolerance and absolute self-confidence with which he sits in judgment on men and things. There is certainty no more unpardonable fallacy than that of \"Bible Christians,\" who assume that the Church in the Apostolic age had reached its full expansion and expression, and therefore in respect of polity, liturgy, doctrinal statement and discipline must be regarded as an immutable type for all ages and countries; from which all departure is necessarily a corruption. They take the flexible sapling and compare it with aged knotty oak, and shake their heads over the lamentable unlikeness: \"That this should be the natural outgrowth of that! _O tempora, O mores!_\" In this sense we can with some caution speak of \"Catholic art\" in music, architecture, and painting, so far, that is, as we can determine the extent and nature of the Church's action, and therefore the tendency of her influence in the way of stimulus and restraint with regard to subject and treatment. We do not unjustly discern an author's style as a personal element distinct from the language and phraseology of which no item is his own. The manner in which he uses that language, his selections and refusals make, in union with the borrowed elements, a tongue that may be called his, in an exclusive sense. The Church, too, has her style, which, though difficult to discern amid her use of a Pentecostal variety of languages, is no doubt always the same--at least in tendency. We are now in a position to consider the surface objection that will present itself to many a reader concerning Durtal's conversion. \"He has been converted,\" it will be said, \"by a fallacy. He has identified the Catholic religion with the cause of plain-chaunt and Gothic architecture, and of all that is, or that he considers to be, best in art. He has laid hold not of Catholicism, but of its merest accessories, which it might shake off any day, and him along with them. Indeed, he scarcely makes any pretence at being in sympathy with the Catholicism of to-day, which he regards as almost entirely philistine and degenerate, if we except La Trappe and Solesmes and a few other corners where the old observances linger on. 'It was so ugly, so painfully adorned with images, that only by shutting his eyes could Durtal endure to remain in Notre Dame de la Breche.' Yes, but what sort of convert is this who is so insensible to substantials, so morbidly sensitive about mere accidentals? We come to the Church for the true faith and the sacraments, not for 'sensations.' In fine, Durtal has not observed the route prescribed by the apologetics for reaching the door of the sheep-fold, but has climbed over in his own way, like a thief and a robber; he has not (as a recent critic says of him) _tombe entre les bras maternals de l'Eglise selon toutes les regles_.\" Our subjective faith in the Church must be like the faith of the disciples of Christ, an entirely personal relation; an act of implicit trust based on no lean argument or chain of reasoning, but on the irresistible spell, the overmastering impression created upon us by a character manifested in life, action, speech, even in manner; as impossible to state in its entirety and as impossible to doubt as are our reasons for loving or loathing, for trusting or fearing. No doubt we hear of men of intellect and learning \"reading\" or \"reasoning\" themselves into the Church; but others as able have read and reasoned along the same line, and yet have not come; for in truth, reason at the most can set free a force of attraction created by motives other than reason. Who shall say, then, that to an eye and heart attuned to quick sympathy, any indication is too small to betray the inward spirit and character of the Catholic Church, or to magnetize a soul and render it restless, until it obeys her attraction and rests in union with her? Those who, influenced by such considerations, would have us extend our efforts from the narrowing circle of Anglo-Catholicism to the ever-widening circle of doubt and negation, are not always clear about the practically important distinction to be drawn between the active leaders of doubt, and those who are passively led; the more or less independent few, and the more or less dependent many; between the man of the study and the man of the street--a distinction analogous to that between the _Ecclesia docens_ and _Ecclesia discens_, and which permeates every well-established school of belief, whether historical, ethical, political, or religious. And this brings us to the problem which gave birth to the present essay. Though this is not so, yet moral truthfulness forbids us to assent to what we, however falsely, believe to be untrue. Hence while the virtue of faith remains untouched, its exercise with regard to particular points may be inculpably suspended through ignorance, stupidity, misinformation, and other causes. That we do not sufficiently realize the dialectical incompetence of the uneducated is partly to be explained by the fact that they often get bits of reasoning by rote, much as young boys learn their Euclid; and that they frequently seem to understand principles because they apply them in the right cases, just as we often quote a proverb appropriately without the slightest idea of its origin or meaning beyond that it is the right thing to say in a certain connection. As we ascend in the scale of education, there is more and more of this reasoning by rote, so that critical incompetence is more easily concealed and may lurk unsuspected even in the pulpit and the professorial chair, where logic alone seems paramount. The \"hagnostic\" greengrocer, in all the self-confidence of his ignorance, is but the lower extreme of a class that runs up much higher in the social scale and spreads out much wider in every direction. AN APOSTLE OF NATURALISM. Mr. Laing is not regretfully forced into materialism by some mental confusion or obscurity, but he revels in it, and invites all to taste and see how gracious a philosophy it is. There is an ill-concealed levity and coarseness in his handling of religious subjects which breaks, At seasons, through the gilded pale, These citations embody Mr. Laing's opinions on this point, and show very clearly his utter incapacity for elementary philosophic thought. Here, as elsewhere, as soon as he leaves the bare record of facts and embarks in any kind of speculation, he shows himself helpless; however, he tries to fortify his own courage and that of his readers, with \"it is clear,\" \"it is evident,\" \"it is certain.\" These strictures are directed chiefly to showing Mr. Laing's incapacity for anything like coherent reasoning in historical matters. Subsequently he uses these most lame and impotent conclusions as demonstrated certainties, without the faintest qualification, and builds up on them his refutation of dogmatic Christianity. However, it is only in his more recent work on _Human Origins_ that he thus comes forward as an historian, in preparation for which he seems to have devoted himself to the study of cuneiform and hieroglyphs and mastered the subject thoroughly and exhaustively, before bursting forth from behind the clouds to flood the world with new-born light. It is deep down in the bowels of the earth, at the bottom of a geological well, that he has found not only truth but, also man--among the monsters, Dragons of the prime Who tare each other in their slime, The evolution of man is practically taken for granted, the only question being the _when_. As to his treatment of the Bible, it evinces everywhere the crudest anthropomorphic method of interpretation such as we should expect to find in a child or very ignorant person. In truth, Mr. Laing is in a perfectly childish state of mind both as regards the Christian religion and as regards philosophy, sciences, and all the subjects he dabbles with. \"THE MAKING OF RELIGION.\" Starting with the assumptions of evolutionists, the theory is plausible enough. Nor is it inconceivable that God, without using error and evil directly as a means to truth and good, should passively permit error for the sake of the truth that He foresees will come out of it. Astrology was not incipient astronomy; nor was alchemy primitive chemistry; the end and aim in each case was wholly different. Yet the pseudo-science gave birth to the true; as false premisses often lead by bad logic to sound conclusions. Totemism, \"a perfectly crazy and degrading belief,\" says Mr. Lang, \"rendered possible--nay, inevitable--the union of hostile groups into large and relatively peaceful tribal societies We should never have educated the world thus; and we do not see why it should have been thus done. But we are very anthropomorphic, and totally ignorant of the conditions of the problem.\" In like manner it might have been, that God willed to let men wander through the slums and backways of animism into the open road of theism. But our concern is not with what might have been, but with what was. However wide the range of experience upon which physical generalizations are based, it can never be so wide as on this score alone to prove the inherent possibility of exceptions; more especially when we consider the confinement of the human race to what is relatively a momentary existence on a whirling particle of dust in a sandstorm. There may indeed be abundant evidence of a certain impetus or tendency enduring from a comparatively distant and indefinite past and making for an equally indefinite future; but there is not, cannot be evidence against the possibility of interference from other laws whose paths, at points unknown and incalculable, intersect those followed by the (to us) ordinary course of events. And in this wholesome agnosticism we are confirmed when we see that while some animals are deprived of certain senses which we possess, and all of them of the gift of reason, others are apparently endowed with senses unknown to us, and are taught by seeming instincts which surpass what reason could effect; whence we may infer that the likelihood of our being _en rapport_ with the greater part of the _possible_ phenomena amidst which we live, or of our possessing all possible senses or the best of those possible, is infinitely small. What a magician a man with eyes would be among a race of sightless men; or a man with ears among a deaf population! How studiously would the scientists explain the effects of sight as produced by subtilty of hearing; and those of hearing as due to abnormal sensitiveness in some other respect! But have we really disposed of ghosts if we prove the appearance to be caused by a subjective modification of the perceiver's sensorium and not by a modification of the external medium--the air or the ether? Since it is a question of a spiritual substance independent of spatial dimensions and relations, said to be present only so far and where its effects and manifestations are present, what does it matter whether it reports itself by an effect outside or inside the percipient--whether it be a \"vision sensible to feeling, as to sight,\" or but \"a false creation proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain\"? Is not this very distinction of outside and inside in the matter of perceptions open to no slight ambiguity? The savage, familiar with the electric sparks caused by the friction of deer-skins, ascribes the _aurora borealis_ to the friction of a jostling herd of celestial deer. \"Nonsense,\" says science, after centuries of false hypotheses, \"it is nothing more nor less than electricity.\" This is very much the way she is dealing with the supernormal at present; brushing aside as wholly nonsensical, beliefs that envelope a core of useful fact in a wrapping of crude explanation, and then receiving the same facts as new discoveries, because she has fitted them into an involucre more to her own liking, though perhaps but little less crude. \"Not deer-skin,\" says science, \"but amber; not miracle, but faith-cure; not prophetic insight, but thought-transference; not apparition, but hallucination.\" And so with the rest. From this ever-growing mass of evidence, it would appear that the universal belief among savages in a spirit-world is mainly strengthened and sustained, not by the phenomena of dreaming but by what Mr. Spencer would call \"alleged\" supernormal manifestations, such as those of clairvoyance, crystal-gazing, apparitions, miracles, prophecies, possession, and the like. For belief in such marvels exists beyond doubt, and furnishes a very obvious and logical basis for the further belief in the invisible causes of these visible effects; nor should we have recourse to an hypothetical and more indirect explanation of belief in a spirit-world when an actual and direct explanation is at hand. If we see the branch growing out of the tree, we need not inquire what trunk it sprang from, unless we have strong evidence that it is only a graft. All investigation tends to show that savages believe in spirits and in the spirit-world because they witness, or firmly believe they witness, supernormal phenomena. The supposition is somewhat favoured if we give ear to that crowd of witnesses whose combined evidence, duly discounted and tested, makes it clear that even among those who ought to have been civilized out of all belief in aught behind the veil, the very same superstitions break out, or creep in, time after time, with new names perhaps, new clothes, new faces, but in substance identical with those held by what we esteem the most benighted races. Further, it is evident that savages pay attention--over-attention, no doubt--to these supernormal phenomena, being free from hostile philosophic bias in the matter, and bent the other way; and that in consequence they have everywhere observed, classified, and systematized them in their own rude, simple way, and have thus forestalled what the S.P.R., in the teeth of science, is now endeavouring to do scientifically. With us, moreover, it is mere chance that reveals a \"medium,\" or hypnotic subject here and there: but with savages they are sought out diligently, and all who have any latent aptitude that way are detected and utilized; and thus the field of their experience is considerably widened. But besides all this, it seems more than plausible to suppose that among primitive and undeveloped races such preternatural phenomena either occur, or seem to occur, much more frequently and extensively; and that apparently supernormal faculties are more often developed. What we gain is no doubt our own in a truer sense than that we had when we hung upon Nature's breast, and were guided passively by instincts and intuitions to purposes that reason can never reach to. By far the most wonderful and seemingly intelligent work of the soul is that by which it builds up, nourishes, repairs, developes, and finally reproduces the body it dwells in. Yet in all this it is almost as passive and unconscious as a vegetable. The effect is (as far as our comprehension of it goes) altogether preternatural and inexplicable; yet it is far less _our_ effect than what we do by reason and by taking thought. What we pay for in dignity we lose in efficiency. While Nature carries us in her arms we move swiftly enough, but when she sets us on our feet to learn independence and self-rule, we cut a sorry figure. In our helplessness she does all for us as though we were yet part of her; but in the measure that we are weaned and begin to fend for ourselves as responsible agents, we are deprived of the aids and easements befitting the childhood of our race. If this be true, if man in his primitive state possessed intuitive powers which have sunk into abeyance, either through the diversion of psychic energy to the development of other powers, or through desuetude, or as the instincts of the new-born babe are lost when their brief purpose is fulfilled; if the occasional recrudescence of these powers among civilized peoples is really a survival of an earlier state; then indeed we can understand that the evidence, or apparent evidence, for the existence of an X-region, or spirit-world, may have been immeasurably more abundant in the infancy of the human race, than it is now even among contemporary savages. We know only too well that there are universal fallacies as well as universal truths of the human mind. For the practical necessities of life the imagination stands to man in good stead, but as the inadequate instrument of speculative thought its fertile deceitfulness is betrayed in his very earliest attempts at philosophy; nor are his subsequent efforts directed to anything else than the endeavour to correct and allow for its refractions and distortions, to transcend its narrow limitations, to force it to express, meanly and clumsily, truths which otherwise it would entirely obscure and deny. There might well be facts, nay, there are undoubtedly facts, which to the untutored mind necessarily and always seem altogether supernormal, but which science rightly explains to be, however unusual, yet natural, and in no way outside the ordinary laws. So far as the marvels of sorcerers and medicine-men are the work of chicanery, they will lack that persistence and ubiquity which justifies the investigation of other marvels for whose universality some basis must be sought in the uniform nature of things. Cheats will not always and everywhere hit on the same plan, nor will the independent testimony of false witnesses be found agreeing. On the animistic hypothesis we should be prepared to find the notion of God, as above stated, to be of very late development and accepted only by races fairly advanced in culture. We should, _a priori_, deem it impossible to discover more among the lower savages than a rude religion of ghost-worship, without any consciousness of a moral Supreme Being, the father and friend of man. Whatever might seem to suggest the contrary, would be explainable by some infiltration of more civilized beliefs. Armed with this hypothesis the eye is quick \"to see that it brings with it the power of seeing,\" and to impose its own forms and schemata on the phenomena offered to its observation. The \"animist\" ill-acquainted with the savage's language and modes of thought; excluded from those inner \"mysteries\" which figure in nearly every savage religion; confounding the symbolism, the popular mythology, and also the corruptions, distortions, and abuses which are the parasites of all religion, with the religion itself, can easily come away with the impression that there is nothing but ghost-worship, priestcraft, and superstition, no conception whatever of a personal \"Power that makes for Righteousness.\" If Protestants have almost as crude an idea of the religion of their Catholic fellow-Christians with whom they live side by side, and converse in the same language, if they are so absolutely dominated by their own form of religious thought, as to be as helpless as idiots in the presence of any other, can we expect that the ordinary British traveller, \"brandishing his Bible and his bath,\" strong in the smug conviction of his mental, moral, and religious preeminence, will be a very sympathetic, conscientious, and reliable interpreter of the religion of the Zulu or the Andamanese? But before discussing the relation of this assumption to existing facts and so bringing it to an _a posteriori_ test, let us examine its _a priori_ supports. Another assumption underlying the animistic hypothesis, and also borrowed from Christian teaching, is that the savage regards the soul or ghost as the liberated and consummated man, and that therefore he will place God rather in the category of disembodied than of embodied men. Yet not only the Greek and Roman, but even the Jew, looked on the shade of the departed as a mere fraction of humanity, as a miserable residue of man, helpless and hopeless, and withal disposed to be mischievous and exacting, and therefore needing to be humoured in various ways. Nay, even Christianity with its dogma of the bodily resurrection, denies that Platonic doctrine which views the body as the prison rather than as the complement and consort of the soul; although it holds the soul to be of an altogether higher, because spiritual, order. But to the primitive savage, who everywhere regards death as non-natural, as accidental and violent, the surviving spirit, however uncertain-tempered and incalculable in its movements, however much to be feared and propitiated, does not command reverence as a being of a superior order. At best it is: \"Alas! poor ghost!\" Better a live dog than a dead lion; better the meanest slave that draws breath, than the monarch of Orcus. Surely it is not in the region of shadows that the savage will look for the great \"all-father;\" but in the world of solid, tangible realities. But when Mr. Lang, who has no hypothesis of his own as to the origin of belief in God, brings the animistic theory to an _a posteriori_ test, he finds it encumbered with still greater difficulties; for nothing is as, _a priori_, it ought to be. But surely, it will be said, all this is too paradoxical, too violently in conflict with what is notorious concerning the religion and morality of savages. Scant, however, as may be the amount of direct worship accorded to the Supreme God, compared with that received by subordinate spiritual powers, yet it is _sui generis_, and of an infinitely higher order. The familiar distinction of _latria_ and _dulia_ seems to obtain everywhere; as also that between _Elohim_ and _Javeh_, that is, between supernal beings in general, and the Supreme Being who is also supernal. Yet so excessive in quantity is the secondary cultus compared with the primary, that an outsider may well be pardoned for thinking that there is nothing beyond what meets the eye on every side. As has been said, the Supreme Being alone is usually considered above the weakness of caring for sacrifice, or for external worship in \"temples made with hands.\" His name is commonly tabooed, only to be whispered in those mysteries of initiation which are met with so universally. Outside these mysteries He may only be spoken of in parables and myths, grotesque, irreverent, designed to conceal rather than to reveal. But rarely is there an image or an altar to this unknown God. It is part of the very economy of the Incarnation to meet this weakness, to provide for this want of the human mind; to satisfy the imagination as well as the intelligence. Here Divine truth has received a Divine embodiment, has been set forth in the language of deeds, in a real and not in a fictitious history. Sacrifice and sacrament, and every kind of natural religious symbolism, has been appropriated and consecrated to the service of truth and to the fullest utterance of God that such weak accents will stretch to. Here the channel of communication between Heaven and earth is not of man's creation but of God's; or at least is of God's composition. This is the great difference between the ethnic religions and a religion that professes to be revealed--that is, spoken by God and put into language by Him. The latter is, so to say, cased in an incorruptible body, its very expression being chosen and sealed for ever with Divine approval, and rescued from the fluent and unstable condition of religions whose clothes are the works of men's hands. Here it is that Catholic Christianity stands out as altogether catholic and human, adapted as it is to the world-wide cravings of the religious instinct; satisfying the imagination and the emotions, no less than the intellect and the will; and yet saving us from the perils of the myth-making tendency of our mind. How far God can be said actually to \"speak\" to the soul through conscience or through Nature so as to make faith, in the strict sense of reliance on the word of another, possible, is for theologians to discuss. If besides expressing these truths in creation or in conscience, He also expresses in some way His intention to reveal them to the particular soul, we have all that is requisite. In what way, or innumerable ways He makes His voice heard in every human heart day by day, and causes general truths to be brought near and recognized and received as a particular message, each can answer best for himself. Will a man be excused for deliberately dashing his foot against a stone because forsooth he has persuaded himself with Zeno, that there is no such thing as motion; or with Berkeley, that the externality of the world is a delusion; or will he be pardoned in his unbelief because he could not justify by philosophy the truth which conscience and nature are dinning into his ears: that there is a God the Rewarder of them that seek Him? Apart from this preparation of the intellect, to which perhaps the name \"apologetic\" should be more strictly reserved, a prior and more important need was the disposing of the will and affections to the acceptance of the truth. For, in a very real sense, love is the root of faith; and the wish that a thing should be true, not only stimulates the mind to inquire and investigate, but also creates a fear of self-deception and a spirit of incredulity which is the fruitful parent of intellectual difficulties. Undoubtedly then the advantages resulting from a belief in religion, whether valid or illusory, are such as to incline not only the higher and more unselfish minds, but even those which are more prudential and self-regarding, to wish to hold that belief--to be unwilling to hear arguments against it. But among the former class will be found many intellectually conscientious and even scrupulous persons, whom the recognition of this inevitable bias will drive to an extreme of caution. Not so much because the facts believed-in are of such intense moment, but rather because the belief itself, whether true or false, is so consoling and helpful, that there seems to them a danger of self-deception just proportioned to their wish to believe. It were then no small rest and relief to such, could it be shown that what they deem a reason for doubt, is really a reason for belief; that the welcome which all that is best in them gives to a belief, affords some sort of philosophical justification thereof. Now if, like the key in our illustration, the religion in question were something given _in rerum natura_ independent of human origination in any form, this argument would be practically irresistible. That besides those beliefs which lead man on to an ever fuller understanding of his better self, and stimulate and direct his moral progress, Christianity imposes others more principal, of which man as yet has no exigency, and which hint at some future order of existence that new faculties will disclose--all this, in no wise makes the argument inapplicable. The whole system of beliefs is accepted for the sake, and on the credit, of that part which so admirably unlocks the soul to her own gaze. \"Now are we the sons of God, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be;\" if besides satisfying our present ideal of religion, Christianity hints at and prepares us for such a transition as that from merely organic to sensitive life, or from this, to rational life, it rather adds to than detracts from the force of the argument. Yet all this supposes that Christianity is something found by man outside himself, with whose origination he had nothing to do; but, if this be established, its supernatural origin, and therefore, supposing theism, its truth, is already proved, and can only receive confirmation from the argument of adaptability. If the Book of Mormon really came down from Heaven, my conviction that polygamy is not for the best, would seem a feeble objection against its claims. That the Judaeo-Christian religion is supernatural and is from without, not only with respect to the individual but to the race; that it is an external, God-given rule, awakening, explaining, developing man's natural religious instinct, correcting his own clumsy interpretations thereof, is just what gives it its claim to pre-eminence over all, even the most highly conceived, man-made interpretations of the same instinct. Yet though claiming to be a God-made interpretation, it is confessedly through human agency, through the human mind and lips of the prophets and of Christ that this revelation has come to us. Moreover, it involves, though it transcends, all those religious beliefs of which human nature seems exigent and which are, absolutely speaking, attainable by what might be called the \"natural inspiration\" of religious genius. Viewing the whole revelation in itself, its adaptability is evident only in respect to that part which might have originated with those minds through which it was delivered to us. If the beliefs proposed seem to have anticipated moral and intellectual needs not felt in the prophet's own age or society, this might be paralleled from the inspiration of genius in other departments, and could not of itself be regarded as establishing the _ab extra_ character of the revelation. Plainly, then, so far as a religion claims to be from outside, its adaptability to our religious and moral instincts may confirm but cannot establish its Divine origin, which, given theism, is equivalent to its truth. For to show that it is from outside, is to show that it is from God. Such, in substance, is the argument from adaptability founded on the assumption of theism and applied to the criticism or establishment of further religious beliefs. It is indeed somewhat stronger when we remember that the self-consciousness, with which we fictitiously endowed the lock, plays chief part in the very design and structure of man; that his self-knowledge, his moral and religious instincts, his desire and power of interpreting them, are all from the Author of his nature. Of this difference Tennyson takes note in applying the argument from adaptability to the immortality of the soul: Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die, And Thou hast made him, Thou art just. But so far as the argument presupposes theism it cannot be made to support or even confirm theism. If, then, we want to make the argument absolutely universal with regard to religious beliefs--theism included and not presupposed--and so to make it available for apologetic purposes in regard to those whose doubt is more deep-seated, we must inquire whether any basis can be found for it in non-theistic philosophy; whether, prescinding from Divine governance and from an intelligent purpose running through nature, the adaptability of a belief to the higher needs of mankind can be considered in any way to prove its truth. So far we have only shown that such a conclusion results from a clearer insight into the theistic conception. Can we show that it springs, co-ordinately with theism, from some conception prior to both? Now, if I take any single organism and study it carefully, simply as a biologist or physiologist, I shall recognize in it certain regularities of structure and function and development, upon which I can found various arguments and predictions. I can argue from its general characteristics, to the nature of its environment and habits and modes of life; or from its earlier stages, to what it will be when more fully developed; and these arguments will be quite unaffected by any theory I may hold as to the origin of these changes, and as to the causes of these adaptations. The order and regularity on which my predictions are based is an admitted fact. Theism or materialism are only theories by which that fact is explained. Now, for mind in the abstract, theism is really as much a presupposition of that fact, as the predicted truth is a consequence of it. Both are logically connected with it, and yet neither is derived from it through the other. Perhaps, the best and most finished attempt to explain the world independently of finality is the philosophy of Evolution, so widely popularized in our own day; and since it is in the region of organic existence, that finalism looks for its chief basis, it is especially by Darwinistic Evolution that its force is supposed to be destroyed. Any form of \"monism\" gets rid of finality more easily than does any form of dualism; and again, any form of materialism, more easily than idealism; and therefore as monistic and materialistic (at least in some sense of the term), popular Evolutionism is the best plea for non-finalist philosophy. We propose therefore briefly to examine this philosophy, so far as it claims to be such, and to see whether it in any way touches the validity of the argument from adaptability. The most that observation gives us is the very imperfect suggestion of the track that such a movement would have left behind it, not unlike the scraps that boys litter along the road in a paper-chase. Similarly, if in the case of organic Evolution we deny all latent potentialities and preordained ends and throw the whole burden on accidental variations and natural selection; if we regard the whole process as no more intelligent or designed than that by which water seeks and finds its own level; yet as in the case of water we must perforce introduce \"a gravitating tendency,\" so in the case of living organisms a \"persisting\" or \"struggling tendency,\" as an hypothesis to give unity to our facts or to account for their uniformity. But these tendencies are as little matter of observation as the aforesaid latent potentialities or preordained ends. In fine, Evolution, whatever form it take, gets rid of theism and finality only by slipping into their place some tendency or indefinable power which it considers adequate to account for the facts to be explained. Let us now see if there be room in this philosophy for our argument from adaptability, and whether it will allow us to infer that because belief in theism and in future retribution are beliefs postulated by our higher moral aspirations, therefore they answer to reality more or less approximately; whether, in short, under certain conditions (specified in our last essay) the wish to believe may be a valid reason for believing. Now Evolution as a philosophy or explanatory hypothesis owes its popularity to its apparent simplicity. Wrapped in its wordy envelope, the notion as formulated by Spencer needs no subtilty of apprehension, but only a dictionary. Nor is the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection more difficult. For we cannot any longer determine the rank of an animal by its organic complexity, since, _ceteris paribus_, this is a defect rather than otherwise. To secure life more simply is better than to secure the same amount by means of complex apparatus. Of course when the favouring conditions are altered, then any apparatus that makes life still possible is an advantage; but till that crisis arises it is only an encumbrance. When life can be secured only at the cost of greater labour and exertion and cunning, it is well to be capable of these things, but surely those animals are more to be envied that have no need of these things. It is only on the hypothesis of an unkindly environment that complexity of organization is an excellence. Plainly, our argument from the adaptability of a belief to man's higher moral needs, vanishes into thin air as soon as the key to the order of nature is thus sought in a blind non-moral tendency, and when that which is lowest is put at the top, and everything above it made to minister to it. And therefore to return to our former assertion, whatever we seem to gain in simplicity of statement by this form of the Evolution theory, we pay for dearly when we come to its application; nay more, as soon as we attempt to translate the words into clear and distinct ideas, we are left with nothing coherent that the mind can get hold of; and it is only at this price that we can cut away the basis of the \"argument from adaptability,\" and with it the basis of all reason and morality. We must therefore go on to examine if there be any alternative form of the same philosophy more bearable. I have forborne all criticism of the supposed _facts_ on which Evolution is based; as others have dealt frequently with their various weaknesses. Nor do I think it necessary to deal with the extravagant subordinate hypotheses by aid of which facts are forced under the main hypothesis, e.g., those which explain how the horse grew out of the hipparion. The crudest finalists have been everywhere out-stripped by Evolutionists in dextrous application of the argument _a posse ad esse_. Assuming still that the facts collected and arranged by experimental science in favour of the hypothesis are such as to demand some kind of Evolution-philosophy; assuming that the very imperfect serial classification of living things according to their degree of organic definiteness, coherence, and heterogeneity not merely represents a variety which has always coexisted since life was possible on this earth, but rather traces out or hints at the genetic process by which this variety has been produced, let us see if there be any other governing principle directing the process, more intelligible than the persistence of that mere organic life which cannot even be thought of as distinct from those appliances and functions which it is supposed to have evolved for its own service by \"natural selection.\" Thus conceived, the course of evolution is comparable, not as before, to the gradual unveiling of a blank canvas, revealing simply a greater extent of the same appearance, but to the gradual unveiling of a picture whose full unity of meaning is held in suspense till the disclosure is completed. We do not now interpret the higher by the lower, but the lower by the higher; the beginning by the end. This may seem perilously near to finalism, yet it is no more necessarily so, than the process of photography; we only need a self-adaptive tendency in life-matter responsive to the stimulating-tendency of the environment. Not, of course, that this bundle of words really explains anything, but that like other formulae of the kind, it prescinds from the question of ends and origins, by making a statement of what happens serve as a cause of what happens, and calling it a Law or a Tendency, or a Latent Potentiality--thus filling the gap which mere agnosticism creates in our thought. The part played by struggle and competition in this process of Evolution is naturally exaggerated by those who deny any latent tendency other than that of mere persistence in being; who repudiate an internal expansiveness towards fuller kinds of existence, drawn out or checked by the environment. Competition plays a prominent part when there is question of the lower grades of life, in so far as these depend on a pabulum that is limited in quantity. In such cases competition, within certain limits, will secure the bringing-out of latent powers by which the lower level of life is maintained and a higher level entered upon; the lower being secured by the superimposition of the higher. This supposition is not adverse to the derivation of species from a common stock, but rather favours the notion that as in the case of the individual the period of plasticity is short compared with that of morphological stability, so if there was such an arboreal branching out of species from a common root, it took place rapidly in conditions as different from ours as those of uterine from extra-uterine life; and that the stage of inflexibility may have been reached before any time of which we have record. But in truth when we see in the world of chemical substances an altogether similar sedation of species where there can be no question of common descent as its cause, we may well suspend our judgment till the established facts have excluded the many hypotheses other than Evolution by which they may be explained. As long as Evolution claims to be no more than a working scientific hypothesis, like ether or electric fluid--a sort of frame or subjective category into which observed facts are more conveniently fitted, it cannot justly be pressed for a solution of ultimate problems; but when it claims to be a complete philosophy and as such to extrude other philosophies previously in possession, it must show that it can rest the mind where they leave it restless; or that it has proved their proffered solutions spurious. This, so far, it has absolutely failed to do. At most it may determine more accurately the way in which God works out His Idea in Creation. It can stand as long as it is content to prescind from the question of ends and origins; but then it is no longer a complete philosophy. As soon as it attempts to solve those problems it becomes incoherent and unthinkable. Its true complement is theism and finality, which flow from it as naturally, if not quite so immediately as the \"argument from adaptability.\" _Deus creavit_ is so far the only moderately intelligible, or at least not demonstrably unintelligible, answer given to the problem of _In principio_. IDEALISM IN STRAITS. \"Can any good come out of Trinity?\" is a question that has been asked and answered in various senses during the recent Catholic University controversies in Ireland; but for whatever other good Catholics might look to that staunchly Elizabethan institution, they would scarcely turn thither for theological guidance. Yet all definition is negative as well as positive; exclusive as well as inclusive; and we always know our position more deeply and accurately in the measure that we comprehend those other positions to which it is opposed. The educative value of comparing notes, quite apart from all prospect of coming to an agreement, or even of flaying our adversaries alive, is simply inestimable; we do not rightly know where we stand, except in so far as we know where others stand--for place is relative. The unification it effects when treated rigorously as a complete philosophy leaves out of account the best part of what it was bound to account for. In spite of idealism, the idealist goes on _believing_ in other persons or spheres of experience, and in Nature as the experience of a Divine Person. But since, on his principles, persons are mutually exclusive, and none can enter the sphere of another's experience, to see with his eyes, or to feel with his nerves, since, Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart, We have but hinted at the barest outlines of Mr. D'Arcy's argument which, as against Idealism, is close-reasoned and subtle; and now we have left but little space to deal with the more really interesting chapter on the \"Ultimate Unity.\" It is not pretended that we can form any conception of the precise nature of that unity, but merely that some such unknown kind of unity is needed to deliver us from the antinomies of thought. As we could never rise to the intrinsic conception of personal unity from the consideration of some lower unity, material or mechanical; so neither can we pass from the notion of personal to that of superpersonal unity or being. That God is love; and that love, which as an affection, produces an affective unity between separate persons, can as the subsistent and primal unity produce a substantial and ineffable union of which the other is a shadow, is a view towards which revelation points. That the mere affection of love, the moral union of wills, is an insufficient unification of personalities is implied by the fact that love always tends to some sort of real union and communication; and still more, that it springs from a sense of inexplicable identity. It is almost a crime in criticism to deal with such a multitude of deep problems in so brief and hasty an essay. But if we have roughly indicated the main outlines of the author's position, we shall have done as much as can be reasonably expected of us; though it is with great reluctance that we pass over many points, and even whole chapters, bristling with interest."},"source":{"kind":"string","value":"redpajama-book"},"token_estimate":{"kind":"number","value":14959,"string":"14,959"}}},{"rowIdx":94,"cells":{"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Produced by Simon Page THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE \"A meal and a bed--that's good; you must think I live like a king.\" \"And I notice you hate like the mischief to fail, even though.\" \"Only I never have failed,\" put in Reeve-Howard, with the amused complacency born of much adulation. Thurston kicked a foot-rest out of his way. \"Well, I have. The fashion now is for swashbuckling tales with a haze of powder smoke rising to high heaven. The public taste runs to gore and more gore, and kidnappings of beautiful maidens-bah!\" \"Follow the fashion then--if you must write. Get out of your pink tea and orchid atmosphere, and take your heroines out West--away out, beyond the Mississippi, and let them be kidnapped. Or New Mexico would do.\" \"New Mexico is also beyond the Mississippi, I believe,\" Thurston hinted. \"I have,\" Thurston sighed. \"My last rejection states that the local color is weak and unconvincing. Hang the local color!\" The foot-rest suffered again. While he brooded grew a keen longing to see again the little town huddled under the bare, brown hills that shut out the world; to see the gay-blanketed Indians who stole like painted shadows about the place, and the broad river always hurrying away to the sunrise. He had been afraid of the river and of the bare hills and the Indians. He felt that his mother, also, had been afraid. He pictured again--and he picture was blurred and indistinct-the day when strange men had brought his father mysteriously home; men who were silent save for the shuffling of their feet, and who carried their big hats awkwardly in their hands. Thurston glanced up impersonally, hesitated between annoyance and a natural desire to, be courteous, and replied that he had no memory of any previous meeting. \"Mebby not,\" admitted the other, and searched the face of Thurston with his keen eyes. It came to Phil that they were also a bit wistful, but he went unsympathetically back to his reading. Phil stared and confessed to all but the \"Bud.\" \"That's what me and your dad always called yuh,\" the man asserted. \"Well, I'll be hanged! But I knew it. I knew I'd run acrost yuh somewheres. You're the dead image uh your dad, Bill Thurston. And me and Bill freighted together from Whoop-up to Benton along in the seventies. Before yuh was born we was chums. I don't reckon you'd remember me? Hank Graves, that used to pack yuh around on his back, and fill yuh up on dried prunes--when dried prunes was worth money? Yuh used to call 'em 'frumes,' and--Why, it was me with your dad when the Indians pot-shot him at Chimney Rock; and it was me helped your mother straighten things up so she could pull out, back where she come from. She never took to the West much. How is she? Dead? Too bad; she was a mighty fine woman, your mother was. \"Well, I'll-be-hanged! Bud Thurston little, tow-headed Bud that used to holler for 'frumes' if he seen me coming a mile off. Doggone your measly hide, where's all them pink apurns yuh used to wear?\" He leaned back and laughed--a silent, inner convulsion of pure gladness. So, borne swiftly into the West they talked, and the time seemed short. The train had long since been racing noisily over the silent prairies spread invitingly with tender green--great, lonely, inscrutable, luring men with a spell as sure and as strong as is the spell of the sea. CHAPTER II. LOCAL COLOR IN THE RAW For a long time the gaze of Thurston clung fascinated to the wide prairie land, feeling again the stir in his blood. Then, when a deep cut shut from him the sight of the wilderness, he chanced to turn his head, and looked straight into the clear, blue-gray eyes of a girl across the aisle. Thurston considered himself immune from blue-gray--or any other-eyes, so that he permitted himself to regard her calmly and judicially, his mind reverting to the fact that he would need a heroine to be kidnapped, and wondering if she would do. She was a Western girl, he could tell that by the tan and by her various little departures from the Eastern styles--such as doing her hair low rather than high. Where he had been used to seeing the hair of woman piled high and skewered with many pins, hers was brushed smoothly back-smoothly save for little, irresponsible waves here and there. Thurston decided that the style was becoming to her. He wondered if the fellow beside her were her brother; and then reminded himself sagely that brothers do not, as a rule, devote their time quite so assiduously to the entertainment of their sisters. He could not stare at her forever, and so he gave over his speculations and went back to the prairies. Another hour, and Thurston was stiffing a yawn when the coaches bumped sharply together and, with wheels screeching protest as the brakes clutched them, the train, grinding protest in every joint, came, with a final heavy jar, to a dead stop. Thurston thought it was a wreck, until out ahead came the sharp crackling of rifles. A passenger behind him leaned out of the window and a bullet shattered the glass above his head; he drew back hastily. Thurston had never before seen death come to a man, and the very suddenness of it unnerved him. All his faculties were numbed before that terrible, pitiless form in the door, and the limp, dead body at his feet in the aisle. He did not even remember that here was the savage local color he had come far a-seeking. He quite forgot to improve the opportunity by making mental note of all the little, convincing details, as was his wont. Presently he awoke to the realization of certain words spoken insistently close beside him. He turned his eyes and saw that the girl, her eyes staring straight before her, her slim, brown hands uplifted, was yet commanding him imperiously, her voice holding to that murmuring monotone more discreet than a whisper. \"The gun--drop down--and get it. He can't see to shoot for the seat in front. Get the gun. Get the gun!\" was what she was saying. Thurston looked at her helplessly, imploringly. In truth, he had never fired a gun in all his peaceful life. \"The gun--get it--and shoot!\" Her eyes moved quickly in a cautious, side-long glance that commanded impatiently. Her straight eyebrows drew together imperiously. Then, when he met her eyes with that same helpless look, she said another word that hurt. It was \"Coward!\" Thurston looked down at the gun, and at the huddled form. A tiny river of blood was creeping toward him. Already it had reached his foot, and his shoe was red along the sole. He moved his foot quickly away from it, and shuddered. \"Coward!\" murmured the girl contemptuously again, and a splotch of anger showed under the tan of her cheek. Thurston caught his breath and wondered if he could do it; he looked toward the door and thought how far it was to send a bullet straight when a man has never, in all his life, fired a gun. And without looking he could see that horrible, red stream creeping toward him like some monster in a nightmare. His flesh crimpled with physical repulsion, but he meant to try; perhaps he could shoot the man in the mask, so that there would be another huddled, lifeless Thing on the floor, and another creeping red stream. Then a puff of cool, prairie breeze came in through the shattered window behind Thurston, and the smoke-cloud lifted like a curtain blown upward in the wind. The tawny-haired young fellow was walking coolly down the aisle, the smoking revolver pointing like an accusing finger toward the outlaw who lay stretched upon his face, his fingers twitching. News of the holdup had been telegraphed ahead, and all Shellanne--which was not much of a crowd--gathered at the station to meet the train and congratulate the heroes. Thurston alighted almost shamefacedly into the midst of the loud-voiced commotion. While he was looking uncertainly about him, wondering where to go and what to do, a voice he knew hailed him with drawling welcome. \"Hello, Bud. Got back quicker than you expected, didn't yuh? It's lucky I happened to be in town--yuh can ride out with me. Say, yuh got quite a bunch uh local color for a story, didn't yuh? You'll be writing blood-and-thunder for a month on the strength of this little episode, I reckon.\" his twinkling eyes teased, though his face was quite serious, as was his voice. She of the blue-gray eyes turned and measured Thurston with a deliberate, leisurely glance, and her mouth still had that unpleasant expression. Thurston guiltily, but Hank Graves lifted his hat and called her Mona, and asked her if she wasn't scared stiff, and if she were home to stay. Then he beckoned to the tawny-haired fellow with his finger, and winked at Mona--a proceeding which shocked Thurston considerably. Miss Stevens gave him a chilly smile, the kind that is worse than none at all and turned her back, thinly pretending that she heard her brother calling her, which she did not. Her brother was loudly explaining what would have happened if he had been on that train and had got a whack at the robbers, and his sister was far from his mind. Graves slapped the shoulder of the fellow they had called Park. \"You young devil, next time I leave the place for a week--yes, or overnight--I'll lock yuh up in the blacksmith shop. Have yuh got to be Mona's special escort, these days?\" \"Wish I was,\" Park retorted, unmoved. Late that night Thurston lay upon a home-made bed and listened to the frogs croaking monotonously in the hollow behind the house, and to the lone coyote which harped upon the subject of his wrongs away on a distant hillside, and to the subdued snoring of Hank Graves in the room beyond. He was trying to adjust himself to this new condition of things, and the new condition refused utterly to be measured by his accepted standard. According to that standard, he should feel repulsed and annoyed by the familiarity of strangers who persisted in calling him \"Bud\" without taking the trouble to find out whether or not he liked it. And what puzzled Thurston and put him all at sea was the consciousness that he did like it, and that it struck familiarly upon his ears as something to which he had been accustomed in the past. Also, according to his well-ordered past, he should hate this raw life and rawer country where could occur such brutal things as he had that day witnessed. He should dislike a man like Park Holloway who, having wounded a man unto death, had calmly dismissed the subject with the regret that his aim had not been better, so that he could have saved the county the expense of trying and hanging the fellow. Thurston was amazed to find that, down in the inner man of him, he admired Park Holloway exceedingly, and privately resolved to perfect himself in the use of fire-arms, he who had been wont to deplore the thinly veneered savagery of men who liked such things. After much speculation he decided that Mona Stevens would not do for a kidnapped heroine. He could not seem to \"see\" her in such a position, and, besides, he told himself that such a type of girl did not attract him at all. She had called him a coward--and why? simply because he, straight from the trammels of civilization, had not been prepared to meet the situation thrust upon him-which she had thrust upon him. She had demanded of him something he had not the power to accomplish, and she had called him a coward. And in his heart Thurston knew that it was unjust, and that he was not a coward. Properly humbled in spirit, he sat down to the kitchen table and ate his belated breakfast, while the cook kneaded bread at the other end of the same table and eyed Thurston with frank amusement. Thurston had never before been conscious of feeling ill at ease in the presence of a servant, and hurried through the meal so that he could escape into the clear sunshine, feeling a bit foolish in the unaccustomed bagginess of his riding breeches and the snugness of his leggings; for he had never taken to outdoor sports, except as an onlooker from the shade of a grand stand or piazza. \"Heavy, ain't it?\" Park laughed, and slipped the bridle down over the ears of his horse and dismissed him with a slap on the rump. \"Don't yuh like the looks of it?\" he added indulgently. Thurston, engaged in wondering what all those little strings were for, felt the indulgence and straightened. \"How should I know?\" he retorted. \"Anyone can see that my ignorance is absolute. I expect you to laugh at me, Mr. Holloway.\" Thurston had not intended getting out and actually living the life he had come to observe, but something got in his nerves and his blood and bred an impulse to which he yielded without reserve. \"Park, see here,\" he said eagerly. \"Graves said he'd turn me over to you, so you could--er--teach me wisdom. It's deuced rough on you, but I hope you won't refuse to be bothered with me. I want to learn--everything. And I want you to find fault like the mischief, and--er--knock me into shape, if it's possible.\" He was very modest over his ignorance, and his voice rang true. Park studied him gravely. \"Bud,\" he said at last, \"you'll do. You're greener right now than a blue-joint meadow in June, but yuh got the right stuff in yuh, and it's a go with me. You come along with us after that trail-herd, and you'll get knocked into shape fast enough. Smoke?\" Thurston shook his head. \"Not those.\" \"I dunno I'm afraid yuh can't be the real thing unless yuh fan your lungs with cigarette smoke regular.\" The twinkle belied him, though. \"Say, where did you pick them bloomers?\" \"They were made in New York.\" Thurston smiled in sickly fashion. He had all along been uncomfortably aware of the sharp contrast between his own modish attire and the somewhat disreputable leathern chaps of his host's foreman. \"Well,\" commented Park, \"you told me to find fault like the mischief, and I'm going to call your bluff. This here's Montana, recollect, and I raise the long howl over them habiliments. The best thing you can do is pace along to the house and discard before the boys get sight of yuh. They'd queer yuh with the whole outfit, sure. Uh course,\" he went on soothingly when he saw the resentment in Thurston's eyes, \"I expect they're real stylish--back East--but the boys ain't educated to stand for anything like that; they'd likely tell yuh they set like the hide on the hind legs of an elephant--which is a fact. I hate to say it, Kid, but they sure do look like the devil.\" \"So would you, in New York,\" Thurston flung back at him. Thurston, albeit in resentful mood, went meekly and did as he was commanded to do; and no man save Park and the cook ever glimpsed those smart riding clothes of English cut. \"A string? I'm afraid I don't quite understand.\" \"Why, Bud, if you're a man, you'll be plumb spoiled for your little old East.\" Then he swung back his feet and the horses broke into a lope which jarred the unaccustomed frame of Thurston mightily, though he kept the pace doggedly. \"I've got to go down to the Stevens place,\" Park informed him. \"You met Mona yesterday--it was her come down on the train with me, yuh remember.\" Thurston did remember very distinctly. \"Hank says yuh compose stories. Is that right?\" \"Well, there's a lot in this country that ain't ever been wrote about, I guess; at least if it was I never read it, and I read considerable. But the trouble is, them that know ain't in the writing business, and them that write don't know. The way I've figured it, they set back East somewhere and write it like they think maybe it is; and it's a hell of a job they make of it.\" \"I didn't know,\" said Thurston dubiously, \"that you ever shipped cattle into this country. I supposed you shipped them out. Is Mr. Graves buying some?\" CHAPTER IV. THE TRAIL-HERD Thurston tucked the bulb of his camera down beside the bellows and closed the box with a snap. \"I wonder what old Reeve would say to that view,\" he mused aloud. \"Oh, a fellow back in New York. Jove! he'd throw up his dry-point heads and take to oils and landscapes if he could see this.\" The \"this\" was a panoramic view of the town and surrounding valley of Billings. The day was sunlit and still, and far objects stood up with sharp outlines in the clear atmosphere. Here and there the white tents of waiting trail-outfits splotched the bright green of the prairie. Horsemen galloped to and from the town at top speed, and a long, grimy red stock train had just snorted out on a siding by the stockyards where the bellowing of thirsty cattle came faintly like the roar of pounding surf in the distance. \"Perhaps,\" he remarked hopefully, \"the next train will be ours.\" Strange how soon a man may identify himself with new conditions and new aims. He had come West to look upon the life from the outside, and now his chief thought was of the coming steers, which he referred to unblushingly as \"our cattle.\" Such is the spell of the range. \"Let's ride on over, Bud,\" Park proposed. \"That's likely the Circle Bar shipment. Their bunch comes from the same place ours does, and I want to see how they stack up.\" \"I'm going to take my Kodak,\" said he. \"I like to watch them unload, and I can get some good pictures, with this sunlight.\" It was an old story with Park, and Thurston's enthusiasm struck him as a bit funny. He perched upon a corner of the fence out of the way, and smoked cigarettes while he watched the cattle and shouted pleasantries to the men who prodded and swore and gesticulated at the wild-eyed huddle in the pens. Soon his turn would come, but just now he was content to look on and take his ease. \"Good shot,\" Park encouraged, \"but I'd advise yuh to take another target. You'll have the tent down over Scotty's ears, and then you'll think yuh stirred up a mess uh hornets. \"Well,\" Park retorted, \"it'll be your own funeral if yuh get fired. Better stake yourself to a pair uh chaps; you'll need 'em on the trip.\" \"Also a large, rainbow-hued silk handkerchief if I want to look the part,\" Thurston bantered. When he went back into the dust and roar, Park ordered him curtly to tend the branding fire, since both crews would brand that afternoon and get the corrals cleared for the next shipment. Thurston thanked Park mentally; tending branding-fire sounded very much like child's play. Soon the gray dust-cloud took on a shade of blue in places where the smoke from the fires cut through; a new tang smote the nostrils: the rank odor of burning hair and searing hides; a new note crept into the clamoring roar: the low-keyed blat of pain and fright. \"I hope so; at any rate, I have a deep, inner knowledge of the joys of branding cattle.\" \"Roll out, boys--we got a train pulling in!\" CHAPTER V. THE STORM \"Aw, they'll be miles away by then,\" Bob assured him unfeelingly. \"By the signs, you can take snap-shots by lightning in another hour. Got your slicker, Bud?\" Thurston said he hadn't, and Bob shook his head prophetically. \"You'll sure wish yuh had it before yuh hit camp again; when yuh get wise, you'll ride with your slicker behind the cantle, rain or shine. They'll need singing to, to-night.\" Thurston prudently kept silent, since he knew nothing whatever about it, and Bob gave him minute directions about riding his rounds, and how to turn a stray animal back into the herd without disturbing the others. The man they relieved met them silently and rode away to camp. Off to the right an animal coughed, and a black shape moved out from the shadows. \"She's o-only a bird in a gil-ded cage, A beautiful sight to see-e-e; You may think she seems ha-a-aappy and free from ca-a-re..\" \"Her beauty was so-o-old For an old man's go-o-old, She's a bird in a gilded ca-a-age.\" \"I stood in a church-yard just at ee-eve, While the sunset adorned the west.\" \"Say,\" Bob began when he came near enough, \"do yuh know the words uh that piece? It's a peach; I wisht you'd sing it.\" He rode on, still humming the woes of the lady who married for gold. Thurston obeyed while the high-piled thunder-heads rumbled deep accompaniment, like the resonant lower tones of a bass viol. \"Last night I lay a-sleeping, there came a dream so fair; I stood in old Jerusalem, beside the temple there.\" A steer stepped restlessly out of the herd, and Thurston's horse, trained to the work, of his own accord turned him gently back. \"I heard the children singing; and ever as they sang, Me thought the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang.\" From the west the thunder boomed, drowning the words in its deep-throated growl. \"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing.\" \"Hit her up a little faster, Bud, or we'll lose some. They're getting on their feet with that thunder.\" Sunfish, in answer to Thurston's touch on the reins, quickened to a trot. The joggling was not conducive to the best vocal expression, but the singer persevered: \"Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna to your King!\" Flash! the lightning cut through the storm-clouds, and Bob, who had contented himself with a subdued whistling while he listened, took up the refrain: \"Jerusalem, Jerusalem.\" \"Keep a-hollering, Bud!\" came the command, and after it Bob's voice trilled high above the thunder-growl: \"Hosanna in the high-est. Hosanna to your King!\" \"There's a bunch a-running,\" called Bob from across the frightened herd. \"If they hit us, give Sunfish his head, he's been there before--and keep on the outside!\" That was what saved him, for he had the sense to obey. After a few minutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears and the crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs close upon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as it were, while the tumult swept by. Presently he was galloping along behind and wondering dully how he got there, though perhaps Sunfish knew well enough. He heard a man's voice calling to him, and distinguished the dim shape of a rider close by. He shouted that password of the range, \"Hello!\" \"What outfit is this?\" the man cried again. Down the long length of the valley they swept, gathering to themselves other herds and other riders as incensed as were themselves. It is not pretty work, nor amusing, to gallop madly in the wake of a stampede at night, keeping up the stragglers and taking the chance of a broken neck with the rain to make matters worse. Bob MacGregor sought Thurston with much shouting, and having found him they rode side by side. And always the thunder boomed overhead, and by the lightning flashes they glimpsed the turbulent sea of cattle fleeing, they knew not where or why, with blind fear crowding their heels. The noise of it roused the camps as they thundered by; men rose up, peered out from bed-tents as the stampede swept past, cursed the delay it would probably make, hoped none of the boys got hurt, and thanked the Lord the tents were pitched close to the creek and out of the track of the maddened herds. Then they went back to bed to wait philosophically for daylight. When Sunfish, between flashes, stumbled into a shallow washout, and sent Thurston sailing unbeautifully over his head, Bob pulled up and slid off his horse in a hurry. \"Yuh hurt, Bud?\" he cried anxiously, bending over him. For Thurston, from the very frankness of his verdant ignorance, had won for himself the indulgent protectiveness of the whole outfit; not a man but watched unobtrusively over his welfare--and Bob MacGregor went farther and loved him whole-heartedly. His voice, when he spoke, was unequivocally frightened. Thurston sat up and wiped a handful of mud off his face; if it had not been so dark Bob would have shouted at the spectacle. \"I'm 'kinda sorter shuck up like,\"' he quoted ruefully. \"And my nose is skinned, thank you. Where's that devil of a horse?\" Bob stood over him and grinned. \"My, I'm surprised at yuh, Bud! What would your Sunday-school teacher say if she heard yuh? Anyway, yuh ain't got any call to cuss Sunfish; he ain't to blame. He's used to fellows that can ride.\" \"Shut up!\" Thurston commanded inelegantly. \"I'd like to see you ride a horse when he's upside down!\" \"Aw, come on,\" urged Bob, giving up the argument. \"We'll be plumb lost from the herd if we don't hustle.\" They got into their saddles again and went on, riding by sound and the rare glimpses the lightning gave them as it flared through the storm away to the east. \"Wet?\" Bob sung out sympathetically from the streaming shelter of his slicker. Thurston, wriggling away from his soaked clothing, grunted a sarcastic negative. Thurston took up his station next to Bob; rode until he met the next man, and then retraced his steps till he faced Bob again; rode until the world seemed unreal and far away, with nothing left but the night and the riding back and forth on his beat, and the rain that oozed through his clothes and trickled uncomfortably down inside his collar. He lost all count of time, and was startled when at last came gray dawn. \"Lord! Bud, you're a sight! Did the bunch walk over yuh?\" he greeted. \"No, only Sunfish,\" snapped Thurston crossly. Time was when Philip Thurston would not have answered any man abruptly, however great the provocation. He was only lately getting down to the real, elemental man of him; to the son of Bill Thurston, bull-whacker, prospector, follower of dim trails. He rode silently back to camp with Bob, ate his breakfast, got into dry clothes and went out and tied his slicker deliberately and securely behind the cantle of his saddle, though the sun was shining straight into his eyes and the sky fairly twinkled, it was so clean of clouds. \"We've got to go back and help with the herd, haven't we?\" Thurston asked. \"The horses are all out.\" \"Yep. They'll stay out, too, till noon, m'son. We hike to bed, if anybody should ask yuh.\" Bob told him it was the biggest mix-up he had ever seen, and Bob had ridden the range in every State where beef grows wild. He was in the thickest of the huddle, was Bob, working as if he did not know the meaning of fatigue. Thurston, watching him thread his way in and out of the restless, milling herd, only to reappear unexpectedly at the edge with a steer just before the nose of his horse, rush it out from among the others--wheeling, darting this way and that, as it tried to dodge back, and always coming off victor, wondered if he could ever learn to do it. Being in pessimistic mood, he told himself that he would probably always remain a greenhorn, to be borne with and coached and given boy's work to do; all because he had been cheated of his legacy of the dim trails and forced to grow up in a city, hedged about all his life by artificial conditions, his conscience wedded to convention. \"I wish I could handle a gun,\" Thurston said between his teeth. \"I'd go after them myself. I wish I'd been left to grow up out here where I belong. I'm all West but the training--and I never knew it till a month ago! I ought to ride and rope and shoot with the best of you, and I can't do a thing. All I know is books. I can criticize an opera and a new play, and I'm considered something of an authority on clothes, but I can't shoot.\" \"I brought my gun along,\" Bob told him apologetically when they were left to themselves. \"It's a habit I've got when I know there's bad men rampaging around the country. The boys kinda gave me the laugh when they seen me haul it out uh my war bag, but I just told 'em to go to thunder.\" \"Naw. Uh course not. I just pack it on general principles, same as an old woman packs her umbrella.\" \"Too bad yuh don't smoke, Bud. There's nothing like a good, smooth rock to your back and a cigarette in your face, on a nice, lazy day like this. It's the only kind uh day-herding I got any use for.\" \"I'll take the rock to my back, if you'll just slide along and make room,\" Thurston laughed. \"I don't hanker for a cigarette, but I do wish I had my Kodak.\" \"Aw, t'ell with your Kodak!\" Bob snorted. \"Can't yuh carry this layout in your head? I've got a picture gallery in mine that I wouldn't trade for a farm; I don't need no Kodak in mine, thankye. You just let this here view soak into your system, Bud, where yuh can't lose it.\" \"The composer would feel flattered if he heard that,\" Thurston laughed. He wanted to be left alone to day-dream and watch the clouds trail lazily across to meet the hills; and there was an embryonic poem forming, phrase by phrase, in his mind. But he couldn't refuse Bob anything, so he sat a bit straighter and cleared his throat. He sang well--well enough indeed to be sought after at informal affairs among his set at home. When he came to the refrain Bob took his cigarette from between his lips and held it in his fingers while he joined his voice lustily to Thurston's: \"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Lift up your gates and sing Hosanna in the high-est. Hosanna to your King!\" Tamale lifted his head and gazed inquiringly up the hill; but Bob was not observant of signs just then. He was Striving with his recreant memory for the words that came after: \"The sun grew dark with mystery, The morn was cold and still, As the shadow of a cross arose Upon a lonely hill.\" Tamale stirred restlessly with head uplifted and ears pointed straight before up the steep bluff. Old Ironsides, Thurston's mount, was not the sort to worry about anything but his feed, and paid no attention. Bob turned and glanced the way Tamale was looking; saw nothing, and settled down again on the small of his back. \"He sees a badger or something,\" he Said. \"Go on, Bud, with the chorus.\" \"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Lift up your gates and sing.\" \"Lift up your hands damn quick!\" mimicked a voice just behind. \"If yuh ain't got anything to do but lay in the shade of a rock and yawp, we'll borrow your cayuses. You ain't needin' 'em, by the looks!\" Just then a rifle cracked, and Bob toppled drunkenly and went limply to the grass. When the rank timber-growth hid their flying figures he crawled over to where Bob lay and tried to lift him. \"Art you hurt?\" was the idiotic question he asked. \"I'm afraid not,\" Thurston confessed, and immediately after wished that he had lied and said yes. \"Are you hurt?\" he repeated senselessly. \"Who, me?\" Bob's eyes wavered in their directness. \"Don't yuh bother none about me,\" evasively. \"Well--I guess they got me, all right. But don't let that worry yuh; it don't me.\" He tried to speak carelessly and convincingly, but it was a miserable failure. He did not want to die, did Bob, however much he might try to hide the fact. Bob tried to lift himself to his elbow; failing that, he put out a hand and laid it on Thurston's shoulder. \"Did they--get you--too?\" he queried anxiously. \"It's nothing; just a leg put out of business,\" Thurston hurried to assure him. \"Where are you hurt, Bob?\" \"Aw, I ain't any X-ray,\" Bob retorted weakly but gamely. \"Somewheres inside uh me. It went in my side but the Lord knows where it wound up. It hurts, like the devil.\" He lay quiet a minute. \"I wish--do yuh feel--like finishing--that song, Bud?\" Thurston gulped down a lump that was making his throat ache. When he answered, his voice was very gentle: \"I'll try a verse, old man.\" \"You're not!\" Thurston contradicted fiercely, as if that could make it different. He thought he could not bear those jerky sentences. \"All right--Bud. We won't fight over it. Go ahead. The last verse.\" Thurston eased his leg to a better position, drew himself up till his shoulders rested against the rock and began, with an occasional, odd break in his voice: And so Park and his men, hurrying to the sound of the shooting, found them in the shadow of the rock. CHAPTER VII. AT THE STEVENS PLACE When the excitement of the outrage had been pushed aside by the insistent routine of everyday living, Thurston found himself thrust from the fascination of range life and into the monotony of invalidism, and he was anything but resigned. To be sure, he was well cared for at the Stevens ranch, where Park and the boys had taken him that day, and Mrs. Stevens mothered him as he could not remember being mothered before. Thurston told him he hoped they would be caught and--yes, hanged; though he had never before advocated capital punishment. But when he thought of Bob, the care-naught, whole-souled fellow. He was glad that it was Mona who smiled down at him instead of a grand-mother or an aunt. For Mona did smile, and in spite of the cheap crudity the smile was roguish, with little dimply creases at the corners of the mouth, and not at all unpleasant. If the girl would only look like that in real life, he told himself, a fellow would probably get to liking her. He supposed she thought him a greater coward than ever now, just because he hadn't got killed. If he had, he would be a hero now, like Bob. Well, Bob was a hero; the way he had jumped up and begun shooting required courage of the suicidal sort. He had stood up and shot, also and had succeeded only in being ridiculous; he hoped nobody had told Mona about his hitting that steer. When he could walk again he would learn to shoot, so that the range stock wouldn't suffer from his marksmanship. When he wrote a story about a fellow being laid up in the same house with a girl--a girl with big, blue-gray eyes and ripply brown hair--he would have the girl treat the fellow at least decently. She would read poetry to him and bring him flowers, and do ever so many nice things that would make him hate to get well. He decided that he would write just that kind of story; he would idealize it, of course, and have the fellow in love with the girl; you have to, in stories. In real life it doesn't necessarily follow that, because a fellow admires a girl's hair and eyes, and wants to be on friendly terms, he is in love with her. For example, he emphatically was not in love with Mona Stevens. He only wanted her to be decently civil and to stop holding a foolish grudge against him for not standing up and letting himself be shot full of holes because she commanded it. In the afternoons, Mrs. Stevens would sit beside him and knit things and talk to him in a pleasantly garrulous fashion, and he would lie and listen to her--and to Mona, singing somewhere. Mona sang very well, he thought; he wondered if she had ever had any training. Also, he wished he dared ask her not to sing that song about \"She's only a bird in a gilded cage.\" It brought back too vividly the nights when he and Bob stood guard under the quiet stars. He was sitting, revolver in hand, watching the Wagners give a practical demonstration of the extent of their appetites, when Thurston limped in from the porch, his eyes darker than usual. \"There are a lot of riders coming, Mr. Lauman,\" he announced quietly. \"It sounds like a whole roundup. I thought you ought to know.\" The prisoners went white, and put down knife and fork. If they had never feared before, plainly they were afraid then. Lauman's face did not in the least change. \"Put the hand-cuffs on, Waller,\" he said. \"If you've got a room that ain't easy to get at from the outside, Mrs. Stevens, I guess I'll have to ask yuh for the use of it.\" Mrs. Stevens had lived long in Valley County, and had learned how to meet emergencies. \"Put 'em right down cellar,\" she invited briskly. \"There's just the trap-door into it, and the windows ain't big enough for a cat to go through. Mona, get a candle for Mr. Lauman.\" She turned to hurry the girl, and found Mona at her elbow with a light. \"That's the kind uh woman I like to have around,\" Lauman chuckled. \"Come on, boys; hustle down there if yuh want to see Glasgow again.\" Trembling, all their dare-devil courage sapped from them by the menace of Thurston's words, they stumbled down the steep stairs, and the darkness swallowed them. Lauman beckoned to his deputy. \"You go with 'em, Waller,\" he ordered. \"If anybody but me offers to lift this trap, shoot. Don't yuh take any chances. Blow out that candle soon as you're located.\" \"Why, hello, boys,\" he greeted cheerfully. But for the rifle you never would have guessed he knew their errand. \"Hello, Lauman,\" answered Park, matching him for cheerfulness. Then: \"I'll hang 'em just as dead as you can,\" Lauman argued. \"But yuh won't do it so quick,\" Park lashed back. \"They're spoiling the air every breath they draw. We want 'em, and I guess that pretty near settles it.\" \"Not by a damn sight it don't! I've never had a man took away from me yet, boys, and I've been your sheriff a good many years. You hike right back to camp; yuh can't have 'em.\" But the men were pressing closer, and their very calmness, had he known it, was ominous. Lauman shifted his rifle ready for instant aim. \"There's never been a man hung by law in this county yet,\" a voice cried angrily and impatiently. \"That ain't saying there never will be,\" Lauman flung back. \"Don't yuh worry, they'll get all that's coming to them, all right.\" \"How about the time yuh had 'em in your rotten old jail, and let 'em get out and run loose around the country, killing off white men?\" drawled another-a Circle-Bar man. Moved by an impulse he had no name for, Thurston snatched the sheriff's revolver from its scabbard. As the heap squirmed pantingly upon the porch he stepped into the doorway to avoid being tripped, which was the wisest move he could have made, for it put him in the shadow--and there were men of the Circle Bar whose trigger-finger would not have hesitated, just then, had he been in plain sight and had they known his purpose. \"Aw, put it down, Bud,\" Park admonished. \"That's too dangerous a toy for you to be playing with--and yuh know damn well yuh can't hit anything.\" \"I know I can't shoot straight,\" he went on frankly, \"but you're taking that much the greater chance. If I have to, I'll cut loose--and there's no telling where the bullets may strike.\" \"That's right,\" Park admitted. \"Stand still, boys; he's more dangerous than a gun that isn't loaded. What d'yuh want, m'son?\" \"That's what struck me most,\" he continued. \"You know what I thought of Bob, don't you? And I didn't thank them for boring a hole in my leg; it wasn't any kindness of theirs that it didn't land higher--they weren't shooting at me for fun. And I'd have killed them both with a clear conscience, if I could. I tried hard enough. But it was different then; out in the open, where a man had an even break. I don't believe if I had shot as straight as I wanted to that I'd ever have felt a moment's compunction. But now, when they're disarmed and shackled and altogether helpless, I couldn't walk up to them deliberately and kill them could you? \"I do,\" a voice spoke, somewhere in the darkness. \"Lawyer from Helena. Never lost a case.\" \"I'm glad to hear it, for he's the man that will prosecute. They haven't a ghost of a show to get out of it. Lauman here is responsible for their safe keeping and I guess, now that he knows them better, we needn't be afraid they'll escape again. And it's as Lauman said; he'll hang them quite as dead as you can. He's drawing a salary to do these things, make him earn it. It's a nasty job, boys, and you wouldn't get anything out of it but a nasty memory.\" A hand that did not feel like the hand of a man rested for an instant on his arm. Mona brushed by him and stepped out where the rising moon shone on her hair and into her big, blue-gray eyes. \"I wish you all would please go away,\" she said. \"You are making mamma sick. She's got it in her head that you are going to do something awful, and I can't convince her you're not. I told her you wouldn't do anything so sneaking, but she's awfully nervous about it. Won't you please go, right now?\" A little ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Then they swung up on their horses and galloped away in the moonlight. CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE Thurston's face turned red. But presently he forgot everything in his amazement, for Mona the dignified, Mona of the scornful eyes and the chilly smile, actually giggled--giggled like any ordinary girl, and shot him a glance that had in it pure mirth and roguish teasing, and a dash of coquetry. He sat down and giggled with her, feeling idiotically happy and for no reason under the sun that he could name. This was the reason inspired by his great desire: he was going to write a story, and Mona was unconsciously to furnish the material for his heroine, and so, of course, he needed to be there so that he might study his subject. That sounded very well, to himself, but to Hank Graves, for some reason, it seemed very funny. When Thurston told him, Hank was taken with a fit of strangling that turned his face a dark purple. Afterward he explained brokenly that something had got down his Sunday throat--and Thurston, who had never heard of a man's Sunday throat, eyed him with suspicion. Hank blinked at him with tears still in his quizzical eyes and slapped him on the back, after the way of the West--and any other enlightened country where men are not too dignified to be their real selves--and drawled, in a way peculiar to himself: \"You're getting things mixed,\" Thurston interrupted, rather testily. \"I'm not in love with her. I, well, it's like this: if you were going to paint a picture of those mountains off there, you'd want to be where you could look at them--wouldn't you? You wouldn't necessarily want to--to own them, just because you felt they'd make a fine picture. Your interest would be, er, entirely impersonal.\" \"Uh-huh,\" Hank agreed, his keen eyes searching Phil's face amusedly. \"Therefore, it doesn't follow that I'm getting foolish about a girl just because I--hang it! what the Dickens makes you look at a fellow that way? You make me?\" \"'Ripple--to have waves--like running water.'\" (That was just the way her hair looked, especially over the temples and at the nape of her neck--Jove, what a tempting white neck it was!) \"Um-m. 'Ripple; wave; undulate; uneven; irregular.'\" (Lord, what fools are the men who write dictionaries!) \"'Antonym--hang the antonyms!\" The kitchen door slammed. He craned again. It was Jack--going to town most likely. Thurston shrewdly guessed that Mrs. Stevens leaned far more upon Mona than she did upon Jack, although he could hardly accuse her of leaning on anyone. But he observed that the men looked to her for orders. He perceived that the point was gone from his pencil, and proceeded to sharpen it. Then he heard Mona singing in the kitchen, and recollected that Mrs. Stevens had promised him warm doughnuts for supper. Perhaps Mona was frying them at that identical moment--and he had never seen anyone frying doughnuts. He caught up his cane and limped out to investigate. That is how much his heart just then was set upon writing a story that would breathe of the plains. A love story without a hero, while it would no doubt be original and all that, would hardly appeal to an editor. Phil tried heroes wholly imaginary, but he had a trick of making his characters seem very real to himself and sometimes to other people as well. So that, after a few passages of more or less ardent love-making, he would in a sense grow jealous and spoil the story by annihilating the hero thereof. Mona moved a little farther away from him, and when she answered she did not choose her words. \"Of all things,\" she said, evenly, \"I admire a brave man and despise a coward. You were chicken-hearted that day, and you know it; you've just admitted it. Why, in another minute I'd have had that gun myself, and I'd have shown you--but Park got it before I really had a chance. I hated to seem spectacular, but it served you right. If you'd had any nerve I wouldn't have had to sit there and tell you what to do. If ever I marry anybody, Mr. Thurston, it will be a man.\" \"Not even if you--liked him?\" his smile was wistful. \"Not even if I loved him!\" Mona declared, and fled into the house. Thurston was going up the stairs to his old room, and Hank could not swear positively to the reply he got. But he thought it sounded like, \"Oh, damn the story!\" CHAPTER IX. THE DRIFT OF THE HERDS How he filled in the hours he could scarcely have told; certain it is that he accomplished nothing at all so far as Western stories were concerned. Reeve-Howard wrote in slightly shocked phrases to ask what was keeping him so long; and assured him that he was missing much by staying away. Thurston mentally agreed with him long enough to begin packing his trunk; it was idiotic to keep staying on when he was clearly receiving no benefit thereby. When, however, he picked up a book which he had told Mona he would take over to her the next time he went, he stopped and considered: He sat down and wrote at length to Reeve-Howard, explaining very carefully--and not altogether convincingly--just why he could not possibly go home at present. After that he saddled and rode over to the Stevens place with the book, leaving his trunk yawning emptily in the middle of his badly jumbled belongings. Likewise the long hours which he spent on day-herd, when the wind was raw and penetrating and like to blow him out of the saddle; also standing at the stockyard chutes and forcing an unwilling stream of rollicky, wild-eyed steers up into the cars that would carry them to Chicago. He was tanned a fine brown, which became him well. His eyes had lost the dreamy, introspective look of the student and author, and had grown keen with the habit of studying objects at long range. He walked with that peculiar, stiff-legged gait which betrays long hours spent in the saddle, and he wore a silk handkerchief around his neck habitually and had forgotten the feel of a dress-suit. He answered to the name \"Bud\" more readily than to his own, and he made practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without any mental quotation marks. Gene Wasson came in and slammed the door emphatically shut after him. \"She's sure coming,\" he complained, while he pulled the icicles from his mustache and cast them into the fire. \"She's going to be a real, old howler by the signs. What yuh doing, Bud? Writing poetry?\" Thurston nodded assent with certain mental reservations; so far the editors couldn't seem to make up their minds that it was poetry. \"I've got some mail for yuh, Bud. And old Hank wanted me to ask yuh if you'd like to go to Glasgow next Thursday and watch old Lauman start the Wagner boys for wherever's hot enough. He can get yuh in, you being in the writing business. He says to tell yuh it's a good chance to take notes, so yuh can write a real stylish story, with lots uh murder and sudden death in it. We don't hang folks out here very often, and yuh might have to go back East after pointers, if yuh pass this up.\" \"Gee! they say here they want a lot the same brand, and at any old price yuh might name. I wouldn't mind writing stories myself.\" Gene kicked a log back into the flame where it would do the most good. His big, square-shouldered figure stood out sharply against the glow. The winter settled down with bared teeth like a bull-dog, and never a chinook came to temper the cold and give respite to man or beast. Blizzards that held them, in fear of their lives, close to shelter for days, came down from the north; and with them came the drifting herds. By hundreds they came, hurrying miserably before the storms. When the wind lashed them without mercy even in the bottom-land, they pushed reluctantly out upon the snow-covered ice of the Missouri. Then Gene and Thurston watching from their cabin window would ride out and turn them pitilessly back into the teeth of the storm. \"Lord! I dunno,\" Gene answered, shrugging his shoulders against the pity of it. \"I seen some brands yesterday that I know belongs up in the Cypress Hills country. If things don't loosen up pretty soon, the whole darned range will be swept clean uh stock as far north as cattle run. I'm looking for reindeer next.\" \"Something ought to be done,\" Thurston declared uneasily, turning away from the sight. \"I've had the bellowing of starving cattle in my ears day and night for nearly a month. The thing's getting on my nerves.\" \"It's getting on the nerves uh them that own 'em a heap worse,\" Gene told him grimly, and piled more wood on the fire; for the cold bit through even the thick walls of the cabin when the flames in the fireplace died, and the door hinges were crusted deep with ice. \"There's going to be the biggest loss this range has ever known.\" \"It's the owners' fault,\" snapped Thurston, whose nerves were in that irritable state which calls loudly for a vent of some sort. Even argument with Gene, fruitless though it perforce must be, would be a relief. \"It's their own fault. I don't pity them any--why don't they take care of their stock? If I owned cattle, do you think I'd sit in the house and watch them starve through the winter?\" \"He could buy hay,\" Thurston persisted. \"Some of them belong in Canada--you said so yourself.\" \"I know it, but look at all the country south of us: all the other cow States. Why, Bud, when yuh talk about feeding every critter that runs the range, you're plumb foolish.\" \"Anyway, it's a damnable pity!\" Thurston asserted petulantly. Thurston laughed shortly. \"I suppose it's safe to say I will,\" he answered. \"I ought to have gone last fall, but I didn't. It will probably be the same thing over again; I ought to go in the spring, but I won't.\" \"You bet you won't. Talk about big roundups! what yuh seen last spring wasn't a commencement. Every hoof that crosses this river and lives till spring will have to be rounded up and brought back again. They'll be scattered clean down to the Yellowstone, and every Northern outfit has got to go down and help work the range from there back. I tell yuh, Bud, yuh want to lay in a car-load uh films and throw away all them little, jerk-water snap-shots yuh got. There's going to be roundups like these old Panhandle rannies tell about, when the green grass comes.\" Gene, thinking blissfully of the tented life, sprawled his long legs toward the snapping blaze and crooned dreamily, while without the blizzard raged more fiercely, a verse from an old camp song: \"Out on the roundup, boys, I tell yuh what yuh get Little chunk uh bread and a little chunk uh meat; Little black coffee, boys, chuck full uh alkali, Dust in your throat, boys, and gravel in your eye! So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns, For we're bound for Lonesome Prairie when the green grass comes.\" CHAPTER X. THE CHINOOK Thurston drew the blanket up over his ears, for the fire had died to a heap of whitening embers and the cold of the cabin made the nose of him tingle. The roar grew louder and nearer-then the cabin shivered and creaked in the suddenness of the blast that struck it. A clod of dirt plumbed down upon his shoulder, bringing with it a shower of finer particles. \"Another blizzard!\" he groaned, \"and the worst we've had yet, by the sound.\" The wind shrieked down the chimney and sought the places where the chinking was loose. It howled up the coulees, putting the wolves themselves to shame. Gene flopped over like a newly landed fish, grunted some unintelligible words and slept again. He pitied the poor cattle still fighting famine and frost as only range-bred stock can fight. He pictured them drifting miserably before the fury of the wind or crowding for shelter under some friendly cutback, their tails to the storm, waiting stolidly for the dawn that would bring no relief. Then, with the roar and rattle in his ears, he fell asleep. In that particular line-camp on the Missouri the cook's duties began with building a fire in the morning. Thurston waked reluctantly, shivered in anticipation under the blankets, gathered together his fortitude and crept out of his bunk. While he was dressing his teeth chattered like castanets in a minstrel show. He lighted the fire hurriedly and stood backed close before it, listening to the rage of the wind. He was growing very tired of the monotony of winter; he could no longer see any beauty in the high-turreted, snow-clad hills, nor the bare, red faces of the cliffs frowning down upon him. \"Uh-huh!\" Gene knuckled his eyes and sat up. \"Chinook struck us in the night. Didn't yuh hear it?\" Thurston pulled open the door and stood face to face with the miracle of the West. He had seen Mother Nature in many a changeful mood, but never like this. The wind blew warm from the southwest and carried hints of green things growing and the song of birds; he breathed it gratefully into his lungs and let it riot in his hair. The sky was purplish and soft, with heavy, drifting clouds high-piled like a summer storm. It looked like rain, he thought. The bare hills were sodden with snow-water, and the drifts in the coulees were dirt-grimed and forbidding. The great river lay, a gray stretch of water-soaked snow over the ice, with little, clear pools reflecting the drab clouds above. A crow flapped lazily across the foreground and perched like a blot of fresh-spilled ink on the top of a dead cottonwood and cawed raucous greeting to the spring. After breakfast he left the dishes un-washed upon the table and went out and made merry with nature. He could scarce believe that yesterday he had frosted his left ear while he brought a bucket of water up from the river, and that it had made his lungs ache to breathe the chill air. Now the path to the river was black and dry and steamed with warmth. Across the water cattle were feeding greedily upon the brown grasses that only a few hours before had been locked away under a crust of frozen snow. \"They won't starve now,\" he exulted, pointing them out to Gene. \"No, you bet not!\" Gene answered. \"If this don't freeze up on us the wagons 'll be starting in a month or so. I guess we can be thinking about hitting the trail for home pretty soon now. The river'll break up if this keeps going a week. Say, this is out uh sight! It's warmer out uh doors than it is in the house. Darn the old shack, anyway! I'm plumb sick uh the sight of it. It looked all right to me in a blizzard, but now--it's me for the range, m'son.\" He went off to the stable with long, swinging strides that matched all nature for gladness, singing cheerily: \"So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns, For we're hound for Lonesome Prairie when the green grass comes.\" CHAPTER XI. FOLLOWING THE DIM TRAILS! Thurston did not go on the horse roundup. He explained to the boys, when they clamored against his staying, that he had a host of things to write, and it would keep him busy till they were ready to start with the wagons for the big rendezvous on the Yellowstone, the exact point of which had yet to be decided upon by the Stock Association when it met. The editors were after him, he said, and if he ever expected to get anywhere, in a literary sense, it be-hooved him to keep on the smiley side of the editors. He packed his trunk carefully with everything he would not need on the roundup, and his typewriter he put in the middle. He told himself bitterly that he had done with crimply haired girls, and with every other sort of girl. If he could figure in something heroic--only he said melodramatic--he might possibly force her to think well of him. But heroic situations and opportunities come not every day to a man, and girls who demand that their knights shall be brave in face of death need not complain if they are left knightless at the last. \"I think you're loading me,\" Thurston retorted calmly, winding up the roll for another exposure. \"All right--suit yourself about it.\" Park walked off and left him peering into the view-finder. Still they came. From Swift Current to the Cypress Hills the Canadian cattlemen sent their wagons to join the big meet. From the Sweet Grass Hills to the mouth of Milk River not a stock-grower but was represented. From the upper Musselshell they came, and from out the Judith Basin; from Shellanne east to Fort Buford. Truly it was a gathering of the clans such as eastern Montana had never before seen. There would be no calf roundup proper that spring, for all calves were branded as they were gathered. Many there were among the she-stock that would not cross the river again; their carcasses made unsightly blots in the coulee-bottoms and on the wind-swept levels. Of the calves that had followed their mothers on the long trail, hundreds had dropped out of the march and been left behind for the wolves. But not all. Range-bred cattle are blessed with rugged constitutions and can bear much of cold and hunger. The cow that can turn tail to a biting wind the while she ploughs to the eyes in snow and roots out a very satisfactory living for herself breeds calves that will in time do likewise and grow fat and strong in the doing. He is a sturdy, self-reliant little rascal, is the range-bred calf. He still agreed with the meadow larks that the world was good, but he had made himself believe that he really thought the civilized portion of it was better, especially when the uncivilized part holds a girl who persists in saying no when she should undoubtedly say yes, and insists that a man must be a hero, else she will have none of him. CHAPTER XII. HIGH WATER \"Thank the Lord that's done with,\" sighed Park when he saw the last of the herd climb, all dripping, up the north bank of the Milk River. \"To-morrow we can turn 'em loose. And I tell yuh, Bud, we didn't get across none too soon. Yuh notice how the river's coming up? A day later and we'd have had to hold the herd on the other side, no telling how long.\" Park came up to him and looked down upon the little valley. \"I never did see any sense in Jack Stevens building where he did,\" he remarked. \"There ain't a June flood that don't put his corral under water, and some uh these days it's going to get the house. He was too lazy to dig a well back on high ground; he'd rather take chances on having the whole business washed off the face uh the earth.\" \"I'll course there's danger, with all that snow coming out uh the mountains. And like as not Jack's in Shellanne roosting on somebody's pool table and telling it scary, instead uh staying at home looking after his stuff. Where yuh going, Bud?\" \"I'm going to ride down there,\" Thurston answered constrainedly. \"The women may be all alone.\" \"Well, I'll go along, if you'll hold on a minute. Jack ain't got a lick uh sense. I don't care if he is Mona's brother.\" Park smiled vaguely. He was afraid it would not be polite to agree with her as emphatically as he would like to have done. But Thurston had no smile ready, polite or otherwise. Instead he drew down his brows in a way not complimentary to Jack. \"Where is your mother?\" he asked, almost peremptorily. Thurston did know, but he passed over the subject. \"And you're alone?\" he demanded. \"The river's coming up pretty fast, Mona,\" he ventured. \"Don't yuh think yuh ought to pull out and go visiting?\" \"No, I don't.\" Mona's tone was very decided. \"I wouldn't drop down on a neighbor without warning just because the river happens to be coming up. It has 'come up' every June since we've been living here, and there have been several of them. At the worst it never came inside the gate.\" \"No, I can't.\" Mona's chin went up perversely. \"I'm no coward, I hope, even if there was any danger which there isn't.\" \"Anyway,\" she added hurriedly, \"Jack will be here; he's likely to come any minute now.\" She wrinkled her nose at him also with the freedom of an old friend and Thurston stirred restlessly in his chair. He did not like even Park to be too familiar with Mona, though he knew there was a girl in Shellanne whose name Park sometimes spoke in his sleep. She lifted the big glass lamp down from its place on the clock shelf and lighted it with fingers not quite steady. \"You men,\" she remarked, \"think women ought to be wrapped in pink cotton and put in a glass cabinet. If, by any miracle, the river should come up around the house, I flatter myself I should be able to cope with the situation. I'd just saddle my horse and ride out to high ground!\" \"It won't get up here, though,\" Mona asserted coolly. \"It never has.\" Whereupon Mona got upon her pedestal and smiled her unpleasant smile, against which even Park had no argument ready. They lingered till long after all good cowpunchers are supposed to be in their beds--unless they are standing night-guard--but Jack failed to appear. The rain drummed upon the roof and the river swished and gurgled against the crumbling banks, and grumbled audibly to itself because the hills stood immovably in their places and set bounds which it could not pass, however much it might rage against their base. \"I guess we'll have to be going,\" Park said with some ceremony. \"I kept think ing maybe Jack would show up; it ain't right to leave yuh here alone like this.\" \"I don't see why not; I'm not the least bit afraid,\" Mona said. Her tone was impersonal and had in it a note of dismissal. So, there being nothing else that they could do, they said good-night and took themselves off. \"This is sure fierce,\" Park grumbled when they struck the lower ground. \"Darn a man like Jack Stevens! He'll hang out there in town and bowl up on other men's money till plumb daylight. It's a wonder Mona didn't go with her mother. But no--it'd be awful if Jack had to cook his own grub for a week. Say, the water has come up a lot, don't yuh think, Bud? If it raises much more Mona'll sure have a chance to 'cope with the situation. It'd just about serve her right, too.\" Thurston did not think so, but he was in too dispirited a mood to argue the point. It had not been good for his peace of mind to sit and watch the color come and go in Mona's cheeks, and the laughter spring unheralded into her dear, big eyes, and the light tangle itself in the waves of her hair. He guided his horse carefully through the deep places, and noted uneasily how much deeper it was than when they had crossed before. He cursed the conventions which forbade his staying and watching over the girl back there in the house which already stood upon an island, cut off from the safe, high land by a strip of backwater that was widening and deepening every minute, and, when it rose high enough to flow into the river below, would have a current that would make a nasty crossing. \"Oh, come on,\" Park cried impatiently. \"We can't do any good sitting out here in the rain. I don't suppose the water will get clear up to the house; it'll likely do things to the sheds and corrals, though, and serve Jack right. Come on, Bud. Mona won't have us around, so the sooner we get under cover the better for us. She's got lots uh nerve; I guess she'll make out all right.\" There was common sense in the argument, and Thurston recognized it and rode on to camp. But instead of unsaddling, as he would naturally have done, he tied Sunfish to the bed-wagon and threw his slicker over his back to protect him from the rain. And though Park said nothing, he followed Thurston's example. CHAPTER XIII. \"I'll STAY--ALWAYS\" For a long time Thurston lay with wide-open eyes staring up at nothing, listening to the rain and thinking. By and by the rain ceased and he could tell by the dim whiteness of the tent roof that the clouds must have been swept away from before the moon, then just past the full. A step sounded just behind. A hand, the hand of Park, rested upon his shoulder. \"Looks kinda dubious, don't it, kid? Was yuh thinking about riding down there?\" \"Yes,\" Thurston answered simply. \"Are you coming?\" \"Sure,\" Park assented. They got upon their horses and headed down the trail to the Stevens place. Thurston would have put Sunfish to a run, but Park checked him. \"Go easy,\" he admonished. \"If there's swimming to be done and it's a cinch there will be, he's going to need all the wind he's got.\" Down the hill they stopped at the edge of a raging torrent and strained their eyes to see what lay on the other side. While they looked, a light twinkled out from among the tree-tops. Thurston caught his breath sharply. \"She's upstairs,\" he said, and his voice sounded strained and unnatural. \"It's just a loft where they store stuff.\" He started to ride into the flood. He led the way upstream, skirting under the bluff, and Thurston, chafing against the delay, followed obediently. Trees were racing down, their clean-washed roots reaching up in a tangle from the water, their branches waving like imploring arms. A black, tar-papered shack went scudding past, lodged upon a ridge where the water was shallower, and sat there swaying drunkenly. Upon it a great yellow cat clung and yowled his fear. \"That's old Dutch Henry's house,\" Park shouted above the roar. \"I'll bet he's cussing things blue on some pinnacle up there.\" He laughed at the picture his imagination conjured, and rode out into the swirl. Thurston kept close behind, mindful of Park's command to give Sunfish his head. Sunfish had carried him safely out of the stampede and he had no fear of him now. His chief thought was a wish that he might do this thing quite alone. He was jealous of Park's leading, and thought bitterly that Mona would thank Park alone and pass him by with scant praise and he did so want to vindicate himself. The next minute he was cursing his damnable selfishness. A tree had swept down just before him, caught Park and his horse in its branches and hurried on as if ashamed of what it had done. Thurston, in that instant, came near jerking Sunfish around to follow; but he checked the impulse as it was formed and left the reins alone which was wise. He could not have helped Park, and he could very easily have drowned himself. Though it was not thought of himself but of Mona that stayed his hand. They landed at the gate. Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door with the butt of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its customary assurance, answered faintly from the loft. He shouted again, giving directions in a tone of authority which must have sounded strange to her, but which she did not seem to resent and obeyed without protest. She had to wade from the stairs to the door and when Thurston stooped and lifted her up in front of him, she looked as if she were very glad to have him there. \"You didn't 'cope with the situation,' after all,\" he remarked while she was settling herself firmly in the saddle. \"Then what?\" he demanded maliciously. \"Were you afraid?\" \"A little,\" she confessed reluctantly. Thurston gloated over it in silence--until he remembered Park. After that he could think of little else. As before, now Sunfish battled as seemed to him best, for Thurston, astride behind the saddle, held Mona somewhat tighter than he need to have done, and let the horse go. And from somewhere down the river came a faint reassuring whoop. \"Little girl--oh, little girl,\" he said softly, and stopped. For the crowding emotions in his heart and brain the English language has no words. Mona lifted her face and looked into his eyes. Her own were soft and shining in the moonlight, and she was smiling a little--the roguish little smile of the imitation pastel portrait. \"You--you'll unpack your typewriter, won't you please, and--and stay?\" \"You dear!\" Mona snuggled close and learned how it feels to be kissed, if she had never known before. There was a sound of scrambling foot-steps and Park came dripping up to them. \"Well, say!\" he greeted. \"Ain't yuh got anything to do but set here and er--look at the moon? Break away and come up to camp. I'll rout out the cook and make him boil us some coffee.\" Thurston turned joyfully toward him. \"Park, old fellow, I was afraid.\" \"Yuh better reform and quit being afraid,\" Park bantered. \"I got out uh the mix-up fine, but I guess my horse went on down--poor devil. I was poking around below there looking for him.\" Mona stood up, and her shining eyes were turned to Thurston. \"I don't care,\" she asserted with reddened cheeks. \"I'm just glad it did get through.\" \"Same here,\" said Thurston with much emphasis. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lure of the Dim Trails, by by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower"},"source":{"kind":"string","value":"redpajama-book"},"token_estimate":{"kind":"number","value":15941,"string":"15,941"}}},{"rowIdx":95,"cells":{"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Produced by Distributed Proofreaders Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism Donald Lemen Clark, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English in Columbia University To my Father and Mother The greatest pleasure that I derive from this writing is that of acknowledging my obligations to my friends and colleagues at Columbia University who have so generously assisted me. Professor G.P. Krapp aided me by his valuable suggestions before and after writing and generously allowed me to use several summaries which he had made of early English rhetorical treatises. Professor J.B. Fletcher helped me by his friendly and penetrating criticism of the manuscript. I am further indebted to Professor La Rue Van Hook, Dr. Mark Van Doren, Dr. S.L. Wolff, Mr. Raymond M. Weaver, and Dr. H.E. Mantz for various assistance, and to the Harvard and Columbia University Libraries for their courtesy. My greatest debt is to Professor Charles Sears Baldwin, whose constant inspiration, enlightened scholarship, and friendly encouragement made this book possible. The General Theory of Rhetoric and of Poetry By definition the renaissance was primarily a literary and scholarly movement derived from the literature of classical antiquity. Thus the historical, philosophical, pedagogical, and dramatic literatures of the renaissance cannot be accurately understood except in the light of the Greek and Roman authors whose writings inspired them. To this general rule the literary criticism of the renaissance is no exception. The interpretation of the critical terms used by the literary critics of the English renaissance must depend largely on the classical tradition. This tradition, as the labors of many scholars, especially Spingarn, have shown, reached England both directly through the publication of classical writings and to an even greater degree indirectly through the commentaries and original treatises of Italian scholars. To the Greeks and Romans rhetoric meant the theory of oratory. As a pedagogical mechanism it endeavored to teach students to persuade an audience. The content of rhetoric included all that the ancients had learned to be of value in persuasive public speech. It taught how to work up a case by drawing valid inferences from sound evidence, how to organize this material in the most persuasive order, how to compose in clear and harmonious sentences. Thus to the Greeks and Romans rhetoric was defined by its function of discovering means to persuasion and was taught in the schools as something that every free-born man could and should learn. The same essential difference between classical rhetoric and poetic appears in the content of classical poetic. Whereas classical rhetoric deals with speeches which might be delivered to convict or acquit a defendant in the law court, or to secure a certain action by the deliberative assembly, or to adorn an occasion, classical poetic deals with lyric, epic, and drama. It is a commonplace that classical literary critics paid little attention to the lyric. It is less frequently realized that they devoted almost as little space to discussion of metrics. By far the greater bulk of classical treatises on poetic is devoted to characterization and to the technic of plot construction, involving as it does narrative and dramatic unity and movement as distinct from logical unity and movement. In view of these modern efforts to make a more scientific differentiation between kinds of literature than is possible on the basis of the traditional distinction between prose and poetry, the present historical study of the distinction made by Aristotle and other Greek writers between rhetoric and poetic may be suggestive. Furthermore, the magnitude which this dramatic movement should possess is also discussed not in terms of bulk, but of length. Aristotle's theory of poetry, which influenced so profoundly the criticism of the renaissance, was not followed by other classical treatises of the same scope. In fact, very little Greek or Roman literary criticism is concerned with poetical theory as compared with the keen interest of many critics in oratory. Perhaps the most significant and valuable critical treatise after Aristotle is that golden pamphlet _On the Sublime_ erroneously ascribed to Longinus, which, anonymous and mutilated as it is, still holds our attention by its sincerity, insight, and enthusiastic love for great poetry. There the poet saw the Furies with his own eyes, and what his imagination presented he almost compelled his hearers to behold. And after an imaginative passage from the lost _Phaethon_, of the same author, he says: Would you not say that the soul of the writer treads the car with the driver, and shares the peril, and wears wings as the horses do? Because the imaginative realization of poetry is characterized by passion, intensity, and immediacy, the author of the treatise feels with Aristotle that the dramatic is the most characteristically poetic. On this basis he judges the _Odyssey_ to be less great than the _Iliad_. It is narrative instead of dramatic; fable prevails over action; passion has degenerated into character-drawing. This grouping of drama, action, and passion as the qualities of great poetry is significant. Bald narrative can never realize character or situation as can the dramatic form, either in narrative or for the stage, when the whole action takes place before the mind's eye instead of being told. \"The author of the _Arimaspeia_ thinks these lines terrible: \"Here too, is mighty marvel for our thought: 'Mid seas men dwell, on water, far from land: Wretches they are, for sorry toil is theirs; Eyes on the stars, heart on the deep they fix; Oft to the gods, I ween, their hands are raised; Their inward parts in evil case upheaved. \"Anyone, I think, will see that there is more embroidery than terror in it all. Now for Homer: The remains of Roman literary criticism are not so philosophical as are the Greek. The treatise of Horace is not in Aristotle's sense a _poetic_; it is an _ars poetica_. _Ars_, to the Roman, meant a body of rules which a practitioner would find useful as a guide in composing. As a practitioner himself, Horace is more interested in the craft of poetry than in its philosophy or theory. He writes as a poet to young men who desire to become poets. The essence of poetry he ignores or takes for granted. He says, in effect, \"Here are some practical suggestions which I have found of assistance.\" Thus classical rhetoric was almost exclusively restricted to the practical oratory of persuasion. In the republics of Greece and Rome a mastery of rhetoric gave its possessor political power; for by persuasive public speech a public man could gain a following by defending his clients in the law courts, and influence the destinies of the state by his deliberations in the legislative assembly. As long as these republican institutions prevailed, the theory and practice of rhetoric continued to be sound and practical. Implicit in Aristotle and throughout classical literary criticism there is a clear-cut distinction between poetic and rhetoric. Aside from the metrical form of poetic, accepted by all but Aristotle as a distinguishing characteristic, and the non-metrical form of rhetoric, the essentially practical nature of rhetoric marked it off to the Greeks and Romans as something quite different from poetic and infinitely more important in education and public life. But however clear-cut this distinction may be in principle, in practical application there is rarely to be found such ideal isolation. Classical Blending of Rhetoric and Poetic Such a digest shows better than any generalization a complete confusion of poetic and rhetoric. Poems were to be written according to the formulae of orations; allegory throve. Infinite pains were to be expended on the worthless niceties of conceited metrical structure and rhetorical figures. Garland has neither real poetic nor real rhetoric. _Introductory verses._ O Clyo lady moost facundyous O ravysshynge delyte of eloquence O gylted goddes gaye and gloryous Enspyred with the percynge influence Of delycate hevenly complacence Within my mouth let dystyll of thy shoures And forge my tonge to gladde myn auditoures. Myn ignoraunce whome clouded hath eclyppes With thy pure bemes illumynyne all aboute Thy blessyd brethe let refleyre in my lyppes And with the dewe of heven thou them degoute So that my mouth may blowe an encense oute The redolent dulcour aromatyke Of thy deputed lusty rhetoryke. _The section of rhetoric._ Dame Rethoryke moder of eloquence Moost elegaunt moost pure and gloryous With lust delyte, blysse, honour and reverence Within her parlour fresshe and precyous Was set a quene, whose speche delycyous Her audytours gan to all Joye converte Eche worde of her myght ravysshe every herte. And many clerke had lust her for to here Her speche to them was parfyte sustenance Eche worde of her depured was so clere And illumyned with so parfyte pleasaunce That heven it was to here her beauperlaunce Her termes gay as facunde soverayne Catephaton in no poynt myght dystane. She taught them the crafte of endytynge Whiche vyces ben that sholde avoyded be Whiche ben the coulours gay of that connynge Theyr dyfference and eke theyr properte Eche thynge endyte how it sholde poynted be Dystynctyon she gan clare and dyscusse Whiche is Coma Colym perydus. Who so thynketh my wrytynge dull and blont And wolde conceyve the colours purperate Of Rethoryke, go he to tria sunt And to Galfryde the poete laureate To Janneus a clerke of grete estate Within the fyrst parte of his gramer boke Of this mater there groundely may he loke. In Tullius also moost eloquent The chosen spouse unto this lady free His gylted craft and gloyre in content Gay thynges I made eke, yf than lust to see Go loke the Code also the dygestes thre The bookes of lawe and of physyke good Of ornate speche there spryngeth up the flood. In prose and metre of all kynde ywys This lady blyssed had lust for to playe With her was blesens Richarde pophys Farrose pystyls clere lusty fresshe and gay With maters vere poetes in good array Ovyde, Omer, Vyrgyll, Lucan, Orace Alane, Bernarde, Prudentius and Stace. But Lydgate's rhetoric was not only restricted to style; it was expanded to include the style of the poets as well as that of the prose writers, as the last stanza shows. If Lydgate thought poetry to include anything more than this style, he does not say so. And in another place, again addressing Lydgate, he exclaims: In the chapter on Disposicion, instead of discussing the arrangement of a speech, Hawes devotes most of his space to praise of the rhetoricians because they turned the guidance of the drifting barge, the world, over to competent pilots, the kings. Here, perhaps, Hawes is using the word rhetorician more closely than usual in its classical sense. He may even have known that the fact of kingship had robbed rhetoric of its purpose. At any rate, his Disposicion is like the classical _dispositio_ only in name, and again it is transferred from rhetoric to poetic. Pronunciation (_pronuntiatio_), or delivery, of course applies to either poets or orators. But whereas classical writers applied it to the orator's use of voice and gesture, Hawes applies it only to the poet's reading aloud. He recommends that when a poet reads his verses, he should make his voice dolorous in bewailing a woeful tragedy, and his countenance glad in joyful matter. It is important, however, that the reading poet be not boisterous or unmannered. Let him be moderate, gentle, and seemly. The final section, that on memory, comes closer to its classical sense than does any other. Here the mnemonic system of \"places,\" supposedly invented by Simonides, is explained obscurely. Even more obscure is its applicability to Hawes's subject. Logic and Rhetoric in the English Renaissance Following this lead, Thomas Wilson, the English rhetorician and statesman, defines logic and rhetoric as follows: This perversion of rhetorical theory in the middle ages and early renaissance had resulted not from mere wrong-headedness on the part of the rhetoricians, but from the limited knowledge of classical tradition during the middle ages. Especially was this true in those parts of western Europe, such as England, which were remote from the Mediterranean countries which better preserved the heritage of Greece and Rome. Moreover, the most important classical treatises on the theory of poetry--by Aristotle and Longinus--were almost unknown throughout the middle ages, and the rhetorical writings of Cicero and Quintilian were known only in fragments. Whether Farnaby had read the works of these gentlemen through from cover to cover is another matter. He at least knew their names, and had read in Vossius, whose footnotes would refer him to all these sources as well as to others, both classical and mediaeval. The development of Aristotelian poetic in the Italian renaissance is a separate inquiry, which has been made extensively, and need not be gone into here. The results which bear upon the present inquiry may be summarized as follows: As an interpretation of classical doctrine this is not illegitimate; but Pontanus runs into confusion by applying to the narrative of epic the _narratio_ of classical rhetoric, which meant the lawyer's statement of facts. Confusing the _narratio_ of oratory with narrative, Pontanus says: Theories of Poetry in the English Renaissance Spingarn has carefully traced the introduction of the theories of poetry formulated by the Italian critics into England at the end of the sixteenth century. It is the purpose of this study not to go over the ground which Spingarn has so admirably covered, but to point out in English renaissance theories of poetry those elements which derive from the mediaeval tradition and from the classical rhetorics, and to trace the gradual displacements of these elements by the sounder classical tradition which reached England from Italy. Thus in accord with the mediseval tradition he analyzes poetry into profitable subject matter and style. Thus rhetoric is considered merely as style; and the implication seems to be that the poets who would improve their style might well imitate Lyly. Webbe evidently means what he says in identifying poetry and rhetoric in style. He adds: The confusion thus is carried pretty far by Webbe, who makes poetry and rhetoric the same in style, both aiming at persuasion. Not only have poetic and rhetoric for him a common ground in diction, but the ideal of diction is the same for both. The diction of poetry is the same as the diction of oratory. The only difference to him is that poetry is in verse and oratory in prose. Puttenham was writing in the same age and with the same tradition which defined Rhetoric as the art of ornament in speech. The only difference between oratory and poetry lay in that the latter was composed in verse. This amateur character of English critics accounts in a measure for the slowness with which classical and Italian renaissance critical theories filtered into England; for a statesman or a soldier is less likely to be up-to-date on theories of poetry than is a professional critic whose business it is to know what is written on his specialty. Another powerful influence in the same direction was the characteristic English conservatism which preferred the traditional paths of thought to Italian innovations. This same common-sense conservatism accounts also for the modifications of Italian renaissance critical theories before they were incorporated into the fund of English criticism. Classical meters, slavish imitation of the ancients, close adherence to the rules of unity and decorum never made much headway in the English renaissance. Such contaminations of poetic by rhetoric as are clearest seem to arise not from the new Italian influence, but from the mediaeval tradition. On its creative side the renaissance sought to produce in the vernacular a literature comparable to that of Greece or Rome. Thus literary criticism was prescriptive, and the typical treatises were text-books. Rhetoric, which had long been taught, very naturally furnished the methods, the teachers, and in many cases the subject matter for this instruction in poetry. As has been shown in the preceding section of this study, the renaissance theory of poetry was rhetorical in its obsession with style, especially the figures of speech, in its abiding faith in the efficacy of rules; and in its belief that the poet, no less than the orator, is occupied with persuasion. This latter rhetorical view that the poet's office is to persuade will be studied more fully in the following section on \"The Purpose of Poetry.\" The traditional view is that by persuading the reader to adhere to the good and shun the evil the poet achieves the proper end of poetry--moral improvement. The Purpose of Poetry The Classical Conception of the Purpose of Poetry The real opinions of Plato are here difficult to discover. In the _Protagoras_, however, he puts into the mouth of that famous sophist an exposition of the conventional Greek opinion. Strabo in a famous passage records an exceptional hedonism in Greek thought and goes on to expound the conventional belief. But aside from the desirability of mingling pleasure with profit in his poetry in order to gain the greatest popularity, the poet does have an educational value in the training of youths by presenting in an attractive manner examples of noble conduct which the young people may desire to emulate. Although Lucretius may not have been assured of the moral value, he was so convinced of the seductive powers of poetry that he deliberately utilized them to make palatable the forbidding thoughts of his essay _On the Nature of Things_. The long passage is worth quoting entire because his comparison is borrowed so frequently by renaissance critics to illustrate the poetic doctrine of pleasurable profit. Lucretius says: When the Roman arms conquered a new city, the story runs, the commander of the forces took over in the name of the Emperor the gods; but before the gates of Jerusalem this ceremony proved ineffective. The fathers of the Christian church, Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian, believing that all the truth was contained in Christianity, utterly condemned the philosophy and religion of the Greeks and consequently the poetry which, according to Greek popular belief, was the inspired vehicle for its presentation. Furthermore, the gods of the Greeks were immoral and furnished their worshippers with bad examples of conduct. Long before Tertullian the moral philosophers of antiquity had already attacked the poetry of Greece and Rome on the ground of immorality. Plato in his day called the war between philosophy and poetry \"age-long.\" The ancient Greeks had considered Homer and Hesiod as the inspired recorders of the facts of religion. They had looked to the poets for moral dogma and example. Of necessity the philosophers condemned the poets for the immorality of their thievish, lying, and adulterous pantheon. Thus the general consensus of classical opinion agreed that poetry has inescapable moral effects on those who listen or read. The moralists, especially the Stoics, when confronted with traditional poetry whose literal significance was immoral, leaned toward allegorical interpretations which brought out a kernel of truth. The greater number, however, of Greeks and Romans in the classical period believed that poetry exerted the most potent influence for good when it enunciated crisp moral maxims and afforded examples of heroic conduct which young people could be induced to follow. Mediaeval Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry With the breaking up of the Empire the stream of classical culture was restricted to a narrow channel--the Church. Opposed as it was to pagan morals and theology, the church could honestly retain classical literature only if it were allegorized. This explains the allegorical nature of mediaeval poetry and of poetical theory. The poet, to Isidore, was the inspired bard who sings of the gods and the eternal verities, not directly, but under the veil of a beautiful allegory. Among these allegorical or indirect means of expression used by the poet to veil truth are fables. His illustrations of a fable show that he is talking about allegory. For instance, the fable of the centaur was invented to show, by the union of man and horse, the swiftness of human life. The purpose of poetry is to her what it had been throughout the entire period of the middle ages. The poet presents truth under the guise of allegory. This, says Dame Rethoryke, has the sanction of antiquity; for the old poets, who are famous for their wisdom and the imaginative power of their invention, pronounced truth under cloudy figures. This fortified the poets against sloth. The special treasure Of new invencion, of ydleness the foo! Then she addresses herself directly to the poets to laud their virtues. Your hole desyre was set Fables to fayne to eschewe ydleness, To dysnull vyce and the vycious to blame. Furthermore she praises them for recording the honorable deeds of great conquerors and for furnishing the modern poets with such illustrious models of the poetic art. This praise of the poets is complementary to a condemnation of the foolish public, whose limited intelligence prevents them from seeing the cloaked truth of the poets. Thus the dull, rude people, when they are unable to understand the moral implications of the poet's allegory, call the poets liars, deceivers, and flatterers. This, she insists, is the fault not of the poets, but of the people. If the people would take the trouble to understand these clouded truths, they would praise and appreciate the moral poets. The conclusion is not difficult. The mediaeval poets are on the defensive, as their brothers had been through all the past. To justify art, the middle ages had to show its usefulness not only to morals, but to theology. Thus Dame Rethoryke in her talk on _inventio_, is conducting a defense of poetry on the following grounds: it teaches profound truth under the guise of allegory; it blames the vicious and overcomes vice; it is the enemy of sloth; it records the honorable deeds of great men. The chapter on style only continues the song. It is the art, says Hawes, to cloak the meaning under misty figures of many colors, as the old poets did, who took similitudes from beasts and birds. The poets praised--Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate--deserve their fame, he says, for their morality. They cleanse our vices. They kindle our hearts with love of virtue. Lydgate's _Falls of Princes_ is an especially great poem, Rhetorical Elements in Italian Renaissance Conceptions of the Purpose of Poetry Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae. Thus by the end of the sixteenth century, the Italian critics had formulated a logical and self-consistent theory of the purpose of poetry. Inheritors of the allegorical theory of the middle ages, which they in part discarded, and discoverers of classical rhetoric which they carried over bodily into their theories of poetry, they passed on to France, Germany, and England their rhetorical theories. The purpose of poetry, as well as of rhetoric, was to them persuasion--to teach, to please, to move. The instrument of poetry was the rhetorical example. English Renaissance Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry In England the Italian interpretations of the literary criticism of Greece and Rome made slow headway against the established traditions of the middle ages. In particular the vogue of allegory did not yield to the idea of the moral example transferred from rhetoric to poetic. Allegory in its more general mediaeval sense of the kernel of moral truth within the brilliant husk of the poet's fables he discusses at greater length elsewhere with full exemplification. For by them we may talke at large and win men by persuasion, if we declare beforehand that these tales were not fained of such wisemen without cause. This obvious rhetorical discussion of the use of poetical illustrations by orators leads him to express his conviction of the moral value of poetry. That poetry did have this improving effect he is quite sure. But Wilson is a rhetorician, not a theorist of poetry; he is not concerned with the moral example as the purpose of poetry. In his section on example as a rhetorical argument he shows how stories and fables may enliven and enforce a point. He illustrates by Pliny's story of the grateful dragon, and by Appian's story of the grateful lion, how a speaker may enlarge on the duty of gratitude among men. But though he does not postulate pleasurable instruction as the aim of poetry, he clearly implies it in his comment on the use of stories in argument. Thus he defends poetry bcause it teaches morality by example and by allegory. The effectiveness of poetry, then, in accomplishing this moral end lies in its pleasantness. The poet, says Sidney, in that most famous passage which is too frequently quoted incompletely, Abelard Aeschylus Aesop Agathon Agricola, Rudolph Alanus de Insulis Alciati Alcidamas Albucius Aldus Alfarabi Alstedius Anaxagoras Annaeus Florus Appian Apsinus Apthonius Apuleius Aristenetus Aristophanes Aristotle Aristides Ascham Athenagoras Augustine Averroes Bacon, Francis Barclay, John Barton, John Basil the Great Bede Bokenham Boccaccio Bolton, Edmund Bornecque, Henri Boethius Brunetto Latini Butcher, S.H. Buchanan, George Budé Butler, Charles Can Grande Campano, G. Campion, Thomas Casaubon Cassiodorus Castelvetro Castiglione Cato Caussinus, N. Chapman, G. Chaucer Chemnicensis, Georgius Cicero Clement of Alexandria Cox, Leonard Croce, B. Croll, Morris Curio Fortunatus Daniel, Samuel Daniello Dante Darwin, Charles Demetrius Demosthenes de Worde, Wynkyn Dio Chrysostom Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dolce Drant, Thomas Drummond of Hawthornden DuBellay Ducas DuCygne, M. Dunbar, William Earle, John Eastman, Max Empedocles Emporio Erasmus Eratosthenes Estienne, Henri Etienne de Rouen Euripides Farnaby, Thomas Fenner, Dudley Filelfo Fraunce, Abraham Gascoigne George of Trebizond (Trapezuntius) Gorgias Gosson, Stephen Gower Gregory Nazianzen Guarino Guevara Hall, Joseph Harington, John Harvey, Gabriel Hawes, Stephen Heinsius, D. Henryson Heliodorus Herodotus Hermagoras Hermannus Allemanus Hermogenes Hilary of Poitiers Holland, P. Homer Horace Hermas Hesiod Heywood, John Isidore of Seville Isocrates James I James VI Jerome John of Garland John of Salisbury Jonson, Ben Julian Lactantius Langhorne Lipisius Livy Lodge Lombardus, B. Longinus Loyola Lucan Lucian Lucretius Lydgate, John Lyly, John Lyndesay, David. Lysias Maggi Martial Martianus Capella Mazzoni Melanchthon Menander Menenius Agrippa Milton Minturno Nash, T. Newman, J.H. Norden, Eduard North, Sir Thomas Origen Overbury, Thomas Ovid Palmieri Pazzi Peacham, Henry Petrarch Piccolomini Pico della Mirandola Plato Plautus Pliny Plutarch Poggio Pontanus, Jacob Prickard, A. O. Puttenham Rabelais Ramus, Peter Reynolds, Henry Robortelli Ronsard Rufinus Sappho Savonarola Scaliger, J.C. Schelling, Felix Segni Seneca Servatus Lupus Shakespeare Sherry, Richard Sidney Sidonius, Apollinaris Simonides Smith, John Soarez Socrates Sopatrus Sophocles Sophron Spenser Spingarn, J.E. Stanyhurst Stesimbrotus of Thasos Strabo Strebaeus Sturm, John Tacitus Tasso, B. Tatian Terence Tertullian Theognis of Rhegium Theon Theophilus Theophrastus Themistocles Thomas Aquinas Thomasin von Zirclaria Tifernas Timocles Valla Valladero, A. Van Hook, L. Varchi Vettore Vicars, Thomas Victor, Julius Victorino, Mario Vida Virgil Vives, L. Vossius (J.G. Voss) Vossler, Karl Wackernagel, Jacob Walton, John Watson, Thomas Webbe, William Whetstone, George William of Malmesbury Wilson, Thomas Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare poetae Aut simul et jucunda et idonea dicere vitae Centuriae seniorum agitant expertia frugis; Celsi praetereunt austera poemata Rhamnes: Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, Lectorem delectando, periterque monendo. Hic meret aera liber Sosiis; hic et mare transit, Et longum noto scriptori prorogat aevum. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance by Donald Lemen Clark"},"source":{"kind":"string","value":"redpajama-book"},"token_estimate":{"kind":"number","value":5898,"string":"5,898"}}},{"rowIdx":96,"cells":{"text":{"kind":"string","value":"E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck By William Cullen Bryant. New York: Printed for the Society MDCCCLXX On its conclusion HUGH MAXWELL submitted the following resolution, which was adopted unanimously: _Resolved_, That the thanks of this Society be presented to Mr. BRYANT for his eloquent and instructive discourse, delivered this evening, and that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication. Extract from the Minutes, Andrew Warner, _Recording Secretary_. The lady from Amsterdam was particularly accomplished, and versed not only in several modern languages, but in Greek and Latin, speaking fluently the Latin, of which the Colloquies of her great countryman, Erasmus, furnish so rich a store of phrases for ordinary dialogue. Her conversation is said to have been uncommonly brilliant and her society much sought. During the revolutionary war her house was open to the British officers, General Howe, and others, accomplished men, of whom she had many anecdotes to relate to her grandson, when he came under her care. For the greater part of this time her husband remained at the country seat in Fishkill, quietly occupied with his books and the care of his estate. Meantime, she wrote anxious letters to her father, in Amsterdam, which were answered in neat French. The banker consoled his daughter by saying that \"Mr. Samuel Verplanck was a man so universally known and honored, both for his integrity and scholarly attainments, that in the end all would be well.\" This proved true; the extensive estate at Fishkill was never confiscated, and its owner was left unmolested. I have said that his relatives on the mother's side were of a different political school from his high tory grandmother. From them he would hear of the inalienable rights of the people, and the duty, under certain circumstances, of revolution; from her he would hear of the obligation of loyalty and obedience. The Johnsons would speak of the patriotism, the wisdom, and the services of Franklin; the grandmother of the virtues and accomplishments of Cornwallis. The boy, of course, had to choose between these different sides, and he chose the side of his country and of the people. I think that I perceive in these circumstances how it was that the mind of Verplanck was educated to that independence of judgment, and that self-reliance, which in after life so eminently distinguished it. He never adopted an opinion for the reason that it had been adopted by another. On some points--on more, I think, than is usual with most men--he was content not to decide, but when he formed an opinion it was his own. He had no hesitation in differing from others if he saw reason; indeed, he sometimes showed that he rather liked to differ, or chose at least, by questioning their opinions, to intimate that they were prematurely formed. Another result of the peculiar political education which I have described, was the fairness with which he judged of the characters and motives of men who were not of his party. I saw much, very much of him while he was a member of Congress, when political animosities were at their fiercest, and I must say that I never knew a party man who had less party rancor, or who was more ready to acknowledge in his political opponents the good qualities which they really possessed. There is this extenuation of the rashness of these young men, that Dr. Mason, to whom was attributed the attempt to suppress certain passages in Stevenson's oration, was himself in the habit of giving free expression to his political sentiments in the pulpit. He belonged to the federal party, Stevenson to the party then called republican. The war went on until Clinton or some friend was provoked to answer in a pamphlet entitled An Account of Abimelech Coody and other celebrated Worthies of New York, in a Letter from a Traveller. The writer saterizes not only Verplanck, but James K. Paulding and Washington Irving, of whose History of New York he speaks disparagingly. In what he says of Verplanck he allows himself to refer to his figure and features as subjects of ridicule. This war I think was closed by the publication of \"The Bucktail Bards,\" as the little volume is called, which contains The State Triumvirate, a Political Tale, and the Epistles of Brevet Major Pindar Puff. These I have heard spoken of as the joint productions of Verplanck and Rudolph Bunner, a scholar and a man of wit. The State Triumvirate is in octo-syllabic verse, and in the manner of Swift, but the allusions are obscure, and it is a task to read it. The notes, in which the hand of Verplanck is very apparent, are intelligible enough and are clever, caustic and learned. The Epistles, which are in heroic verse, have striking passages, and the notes are of a like incisive character. De Witt Clinton, then Governor of the State, valued himself on his devotion to science and literature, but he was sometimes obliged, in his messages and public discourses, to refer to compends which are in every body's hands, and his antagonists made this the subject of unsparing ridicule. \"You may expect another explosion of mad poetry from Lord Byron. Lord Holland, who returned from Geneva, a few days ago, told Mr. Gallatin that he was the bearer of a considerable cargo of verses from his lordship to Murray the publisher, the subject not known. That you may have a higher relish for the new poem, I give you a little anecdote which is told in London. Some time ago Lord Byron's books were sold at auction, where a gentleman purchased a splendid edition of Shakespeare. When it was sent home a volume was missing. After several fruitless inquiries of the auctioneer the purchaser went to Byron. 'What play was in the volume?' asked he. 'I think Othello,' 'Ah! I remember. I was reading that when Lady Byron did something to vex me. I threw the book at her head and she carried it out of the room. Inquire of some of her people and you will get your book.'\" With their denial of the binding force of any law of Congress which a State might think proper to set aside, these men combined another argument. They denied the power of Congress, under the Constitution, to levy duties on imported merchandize, for the purpose of favoring the home manufacturer, and maintained that it could only lay duties for the sake of raising a revenue. Mr. Verplanck favored neither this view nor their theory of nullification. He held that the power to lay duties being given to Congress, without reservation by the Constitution, the end or motive of laying them was left to the discretion of the Legislature. He showed also that the power to regulate commerce given to that body in the Constitution, was, from an early period in our history, held to imply a right, by laying duties, to favor particular traffics, products or fabrics. It was while this controversy was going on that President Jackson issued his proclamation warning those who resisted the revenue laws that their resistance was regarded as rebellion, and would be quelled at the bayonet's point. Mr. Calhoun and his friends were not prepared for this: indeed, I do not think that in any of his plans for the separate action of the slave States, he contemplated a resort to arms on either side. They looked about them to find some plausible pretext for submission, and this the country was not unwilling to give. It was generally admitted that the duties on imported goods ought to be reduced, and Mr. McLane, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Verplanck, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, each drew up a plan for lessening the burdens of the tariff. Christmas was merry Christmas at the old family mansion in Fishkill. He caused the day to be kept with many of the ancient usages, to the great satisfaction of the younger members of the household. He was fond of observing particular days and seasons, and marking them by some pleasant custom of historical significance--for with all the ancient customs and rites and pastimes pertaining to them he was as familiar as if they were matters of to-day. It distressed him even to tears when, last Christmas, he found that his health did not allow him to make the journey to Fishkill as usual. He made much of the birthdays of his grandchildren, and taught them to observe that of Shakespeare by adorning the dwelling with the flowers mentioned in those aerial verses of the Winters Tale- \"daffodils, That come before the swallow dares and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses That die unmarried,\" &c., &c. I have spoken of the hopefulness of his temper. This was doubtless in a great degree constitutional, for he is said to have been an utter stranger to physical fear, preserving his calmness on occasions when others would be in a fever of alarm. He loved our free institutions, he had a serene and steady confidence in their duration and his published writings are for the most part eloquent pleas for freedom, political equality and toleration. Even the shameless corruption which has seized on the local government of this city, did not dismay or discourage him. He maintained, in a manner which it was not easy to controvert, that the great cities of Europe are quite as grossly misgoverned, and that every overgrown community like ours must find it a difficult task to rid itself of the official leeches that seek to fatten on its blood. In looking back upon the public services of our friend it occurs to me that his life is the more to be held up as an example, inasmuch as, though possessed of an ample fortune, he occupied himself as diligently in gratuitous labors for the general good as other men do in the labors of their profession. In the dispensation of his income he leaned, perhaps, to the side of frugality, but his daily thought and employment were to make his fellow men happier and better; yet I never knew a man who made less parade of his philanthropy. He rarely, and never, save when the occasion required it, spoke of what he had done for others. I never heard, I think no man ever heard, anything like a boast proceed from his lips, nor did he practice any, even the most innocent expedients, to attract attention to his public services. Not that I suppose him insensible to the good will and good word of his fellow men. He valued them, doubtless, as every wise man must, but sought them not, except as they might be earned by the unostentatious performance of his duty. If they came they were welcome, if not, he was content with the testimony of his own conscience and the approval of Him who seeth in secret. Farewell--thou who hast already entered upon thy reward! happy in this, that thou wert not called from thy beneficent labors before the night. Thou hadst already garnered an ample harvest; the sickle was yet in thy hand; the newly reaped sheaves lay on the field at thy side, when, as the beams of the setting sun trembled on the horizon, the voice of the Master summoned thee to thine appointed rest. May all those who are as nobly endowed as thou, and who as willingly devote themselves to the service of God and mankind be spared to the world as long as thou hast been."},"source":{"kind":"string","value":"redpajama-book"},"token_estimate":{"kind":"number","value":2545,"string":"2,545"}}},{"rowIdx":97,"cells":{"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. \"It is more dangerous to be a baby in London than a soldier in France,\" said Mrs. H. B. IRVING at the National Baby Week Exhibition. The same disability--namely, middle-age--has prevented us from taking up either of these perilous _roles_. L.C.C. tram-tickets, says a news item, are now thinner. Other means of increasing the space available for passengers are also under consideration. Humanitarians who have been urging the Government not to stain its hands with the more painful forms of reprisal, have received a nasty shock. A German spy has been arrested in London! The rubber cushions of billiard tables are now being taken by the German military authorities. Meanwhile the enemy Press continues to take its cue from HINDENBURG. A notorious Petrograd anarchist is reported to be ill, and has been ordered to take a complete rest by his doctor. He has therefore decided not to throw any bombs for awhile at least. Further evidence of the Eastern talent for adopting Western ideas and improving on them comes from China, where the EX-EMPEROR HSUAN TUNG has celebrated Baby Week by issuing a decree announcing his return to the Throne. Several milkmen have reduced their prices from sixpence to fivepence. Other good results from the timely rains are expected. Large quantities of food have been carried off by a burglar from several houses in the Heathfield district. Knowing our War bread, we are confident that it did not give in without a struggle. We are sorry to find _The Globe_ making playful reference to the many postponements of certain music-hall revues. Mr. Justice DARLING will agree that these things cannot be postponed too often. \"How can I distinguish poisonous from edible fungi?\" asks a correspondent of _The Daily Mail_. The most satisfactory test is to look for them. If you find them they are likely to be poisonous. If they have been already gathered they were probably edible. It is now admitted that the conscientious objectors undergoing sentence at Dartmoor are allowed to have week-ends occasionally. This concession, it appears, had to be granted as several of them threatened to leave the place. We have heard so little of the Hidden Hand this past week or so that we are tempted to ask whether it is suffering from writer's cramp. \"Justices cannot guarantee results to litigants in advance,\" said the Willesden magistrate recently. Not without trespassing on the privileges of the Bar. As a demonstration of allegiance to their country's cause the Apaches of Northern America are to hold a great \"Devil Dance\" in Arizona. It only needed this to convince us that all was well with America. Those grandchildren must be getting a little old for active service. [As indicated on another page, TINO'S actual opinion of his Imperial brother-in-law is probably not too amiable; but it has to be disguised in his letters, which are liable to be censored by his wife.] Thank you, dear William, I am fairly well. The climate suits me and the simple life- No diplomats to spoil the scenery's spell, And only faintest echoes of the strife; The Alps are mirrored in a lake of blue; Over my straw-crowned poll the blue skies laugh; A waterfall (no charge) completes a view Equal to any German oleograph. There are no bugle blares to make me jump, But just the jodler calling to his kine; A few good Teuton toadies, loud and plump, More than suffice me in the _levee_ line; And, when poor ALEXANDER, there in Greece, Writes of your \"agents\" rounded up and sacked, I am content with privacy and peace, Having, at worst, retained my head intact. SOPHIE and I have thought of you a lot (We have so very few distractions here; We chat about the weather, which is hot, And then we turn to talk of your career); For rumour says this bloody war will last Until the Hohenzollerns get the boot; And through my brain the bright idea has passed That you had better do an early scoot. Were it not wise, dear WILLIAM, ere the day When Revolution goes for crowns and things, To cut your loss betimes and come this way And start a coterie of Exiled Kings? You might (the choice of safe retreats is poor) Do worse than join me in this happy land, And spend your last phase, careless, if obscure, With your devoted TINO hand-in-hand. I found him the same genial soul as ever, though a shade stouter perhaps and greyer at the temples, and I flatter myself that it was with a smile of genuine pleasure that he led me to my old table in a corner of the room. When the crowd of diners had thinned he came to me for a chat. \"It is indeed a pleasure to see M'sieur after so long a time,\" said he, \"for, alas, there are so many others of our old clients who will not ever return.\" I told him that I too was glad to be sitting in the comparative quiet of the Mazarin, and asked him how he fared. I offered him my warmest congratulations. If ever a man deserved success it was he, and it was good to see the look of pleasure on his face as I told him so. \"And now,\" said I presently, \"I also have a surprise for you, Joseph.\" He laughed. \"Eh bien, M'sieur, it is your turn to take my breath away.\" \"My last billet in France, before being wounded,\" I told him, \"was in a Picardy village called Flechinelle.\" He raised his hands. \"Mon Dieu,\" he cried, \"it is my own village!\" \"It is my mother's shop!\" he exclaimed breathlessly. Then I told him how bent and old his mother was, and how lonesome she had seemed all by herself in the cottage, and as I spoke of the shop which she still kept going in her front-room the tears fairly rained down his face. \"But, M'sieur,\" said he, \"that which you tell me is indeed strange; for those letters which she writes to me week by week are always gay, and it 'as seemed to me that my mother was well content.\" Then he struck his fist on the table. \"I 'ave it,\" he said. \"She shall come to live 'ere with me in Londres. All that she desires shall be 'ers, for am I not a rich man?\" I shook my head. \"She would never leave her village now,\" I told him. \"And I know well that she desires nothing in the world except to see you again.\" Then as I rose to go, \"Good night, M'sieur,\" said Joseph a little sadly. \"Be very sure that there is always a welcome for you 'ere.\" As the man spoke the gold-and-white walls of the restaurant faded, the clatter of plates and dishes died away, and I was back again in a tiny village shop in Picardy. Across the counter, packed with its curious stock, I saw Monsieur Joseph, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, gravely handing a stick of chocolate to a child, and taking its sou in return. In the diminutive kitchen behind sat a little white-haired old lady with such a look of content on her face as I have rarely seen. Then suddenly I found myself back again in the London restaurant. \"Yes,\" I said to the waiter, \"it is possible, as you say, that Monsieur Joseph heard of something better in France.\" And raising my glass I drank a silent toast. [Illustration: THE TUBER'S REPARTEE. GERMAN PIRATE. \"GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND!\" BRITISH POTATO. \"TUBER UeBER ALLES!\"] But we who have met heroes know that they are very seldom of the type which achieves the immortality of the picture post-card. The Reverend Paul Grayne, V.C., sometime curate of Thorpington Parva, in the county of Hampshire, was no exception to this rule. AEsthetically he was a blot on the landscape; among all the heroes I have met I never saw anything less heroically moulded. He hadn't meant to intrude, he twittered; Peter had brought him; it was Peter's fault; Peter was very eccentric. Peter, I gathered, was the fat cob, who by this time had butted into the lines and was tearing at a hay net as if he hadn't had a meal for years. His alleged master looked at me hopeless, helpless. What was he to do? \"Well, since Peter is evidently stopping to tea with my horses,\" said I, \"the only thing you can do is to come to tea with us.\" So I lifted him down and bore him off to the cow-shed inhabited by our mess at the time and regaled him on chlorinated Mazawattee, marmalade and dog biscuit. An hour later, Peter willing, he left us. We saw a lot of the Padre after that. Peter, it appeared, had taken quite a fancy to us and frequently brought him round to meals. The Padre had no word of say in the matter. He confessed that, when he embarked upon Peter in the morning, he had not the vaguest idea where mid-day would find him. Nothing but the black cob's fortunate rule of going home to supper saved the Padre from being posted as a deserter. Then the spinster ladies of his old parish of Thorpington Parva gave him a Ford car, and with this he scoured back areas for provisions and threaded his tin buggy in and out of columns of dusty infantry and clattering ammunition limbers, spectacles gleaming, cap slightly awry, while his batman (a wag) perched precariously a-top of a rocking pile of biscuit tins, cigarette cases and boxes of tinned fruit, and shouted after the fashion of railway porters, \"By your leave! Fags for the firin' line. Way for the Woodbine Express.\" In the course of time the Antrims went into the Push, but on this occasion they refused to take the Padre with them, explaining that Pushes were noisy affairs with messy accidents happening in even the best regulated battalions. He sat down and buried his face in his hands. The redoubtable Antrims had come to the end. Suddenly came a shout from the Senior Captain, \"Good Lord, what's that fellow after? Who the devil is it?\" They all turned and saw a tiny figure, clad only in underclothes, marching deliberately over the ridge towards the Germans. \"Oo's that blinkin' fool?\" \"Wot's 'e doin' of?\" A man rose to his knees, from his knees to his feet, and stumbled forward, mumbling, \"'E give me a packet of fags when I was broke.\" \"Me too,\" growled another, and followed his chum. \"They'll shoot 'im in a minute,\" a voice shouted, suddenly frightened. \"'Ere, this ain't war, this is blasted baby-killin'.\" When the tumult and shouting had died Patrick went in quest of the little Padre. He discovered him sitting on the wreck of his bivouac of the night; he was clasping some small article to his bosom, and the look in his face was that of a man who had found his heart's desire. Patrick sat himself down on a box of bombs, and looked humbly at the Reverend Paul. It is an awful thing for a man suddenly to find he has been entertaining a hero unawares. \"Oh, Dicky Bird, Dicky Bird, why did you do it?\" he inquired softly. \"Oh dear--you know how absurdly absent-minded I am; well, I suddenly remembered I had left my teeth behind.\" [Illustration: _Old Lady._ \"And what regiment are you in?\" _Old Lady._ \"Really! Now _do_ tell me why the officers get so fond of regiments with aren't their own.\"] These mines are very tricky things. That captain was an \"as.\" Domestic Intelligence. I STOOD AGAINST THE WINDOW. I stood against the window And looked between the bars, And there were strings of fairies Hanging from the stars; Everywhere and everywhere In shining swinging chains, Like rainbows spun from moonlight And twisted into skeins. They kept on swinging, swinging, They flung themselves so high They caught upon the pointed moon And hung across the sky; And when I woke next morning There still were crowds and crowds In beautiful bright bunches All sleeping on the clouds. The long arm of the law resents such presumptuous rivalry. This looks uncommonly like an offer to trade with the enemy. [Illustration: _Wife (to warrior, whose politeness to the waitress has been duly noted)_. \"HUM! YOU SEEM TO 'AVE COME BACK 'ALF FRENCH.\"] The gipsy wife came to my door with pegs and brooms to sell They make by many a roadside fire and many a greenwood dell, With bee-skeps and with baskets wove of osier, rush and sedge, And withies from the river-beds and brambles from the hedge. I wonder if the Eastern skies and Eastern odours seem Familiar to that gipsy man, as memories of a dream; Does Tigris' flow stir ancient dreams from immemorial rest Ere ever gipsy poached the trout of Itchen and of Test? Does something in him seem to know those red and arid lands Where dust of ancient cities sleeps beneath the drifted sands? Do Kurdish girls with lustrous eyes beneath their drooping lids And Eastern babes look strangely like the Missis and the kids? I wonder if the waving palms, when desert winds do blow, In their dry rustling seem to sing a song he used to know; Or does he only curse the heat and wish that he were laid Beneath the spread of RUFUS' oaks or Harewood's beechen shade? Which he promptly passed on to the enemy. There are still a few that the old country could spare. [Illustration: THE BRUSILOFF HUG. THE KAISER. \"I'M ALL FOR FRATERNISATION, BUT I CALL THIS OVERDOING IT.\"] ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. [Illustration: NO KILL-JOY. MR. BONAR LAW.] Mr. HOGGE was in his place again. It had been reported that, consequent upon a hasty pledge to remain in Liverpool until his candidate was returned, he was now doomed for ever to wander an unquiet sprite upon the banks of Mersey. But he has wisely determined that Parliament must not suffer to please his private whim. When the report comes up for formal discussion Lord CURZON will doubtless have something to say, and will say it in vigorous fashion. To-day, with the air and mien of a highly respectable undertaker, he contented himself with acknowledging Lord HARDINGE'S contribution and deprecated further debate. Lord ROBERT CECIL, safely back from his travels, does not appear to have kept himself up to date in the interval, for he was ignorant of the refusal of the Allies to allow Greece to set up a republic, although Mr. KING, with his superior sources of information, knows all about it. [Illustration: PARENTAL PRIDE. LORD DERBY.] Mr. LYNCH'S latest suggestion for the furtherance of his Republican propaganda is that the COMMISSIONER OF WORKS should remove from the streets all statues of deceased monarchs, and replace them by those of great leaders of thought. Sir ALFRED MOND absolutely refused. The worst kings sometimes make the best statues, and he is not prepared to sacrifice JAMES II. from the Admiralty even to put Mr. LYNCH himself on the vacant pedestal. [Illustration: _Gunner (home on leave)_. \"WAITER, MY NEIGHBOUR'S EFFORTS WITH HIS SOUP (BY THE WAY, I'M SURE HE OUGHT TO BE INTERNED) ARE MORE THAN I CAN BEAR. WOULD YOU OBLIGE ME BY ASKING THE BAND TO PUT UP A BARRAGE?\"] I watched the PRESIDENT and thought (Unjustly) he was canting; I watched our late PRIME MINISTER When furious scribes were ranting, And vigilantly bent my looks On HARDEN and on BRANTING. I watched JONESCU, also JONES (Great KENNEDY) and HUGHES; I sought illumination from BILLING'S momentous views; I watched Freemasons, Socialists, And Salonica Jews. I've glued my eye on seer and sage, On Mecca's brave Sherif; I've fastened it on what's-his-name, The famed Albanian chief, Till, wearying of the watcher's task, At length I crave relief. So when I'm bidden at this stage To start the game anew And keep KAROLYI constantly And carefully in view, I think I'm wholly justified In answering, \"Nah Poo!\" AN EQUIVOCAL COMPLIMENT. Evidently \"l\" itself would not sever Mr. CHURCHILL'S connection with his old friends. It looks like being \"bad for the coow.\" GEMS FROM THE JUNIORS. Never believe what Berlin says. \"MRS. POMEROY'S REPUTATION.\" Candour (subacid virtue) compels me to set down that there was nothing very notable or novel about the manipulation, by Messrs. HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL and THOMAS COBB, of the comedy of needless complications entitled _Mrs. Pomeroy's Reputation_. The occasion was chiefly notable for the return of Miss VIOLET VANBRUGH to active service and the welcome she was given by her splendidly loyal following. [Illustration: LETTICE AND IMPROMPTU DRESSING. _Lettice_ MISS LETTICE FAIRFAX. _Georgina_ MISS VIOLET VANBRUGH. _Vincent Dampier_ MR. FRANK ESMOND.] Miss VIOLET VANBRUGH was patently nervous with her part, a little jerky and restless. She needn't have been. Loyalty would have carried her through a duller play, to say nothing of her charming looks and her queenly way of wearing a beautiful gown. Mr. LOWNE, as the baronet, made effective play with a quite impossible part in a quite futile situation, and held the reflector up to the best Mayfair Cockney with \"_Georginar_ explains.\" He needn't apologise; we know it's true to life! The piece of acting that most cheered me was Mr. GRAHAME HERINGTON as the philanderer's manservant--a very tactful and observant performance. Mr. FRANK ESMOND, the philanderer, seemed ill at ease (partly art but partly nature, I judged, perhaps unjustly). Miss LETTICE FAIRFAX as the little goose was what I believe is known as adequate. We hope the British piano will resist the temptation. A happy thought to prepare the new voters for taking the plunge. A little hard on the eagle. The General _will_ be pleased. The oldest inhabitant, however, is still undefeated. For months I had been chasing Cuthbert. I had a store of withering phrases burning to be poured over his unmentionable head. Last Tuesday my opportunity arrived. \"Nothing whatever to do with the Army,\" he snapped, and a Prussian-blue opponent was smacked off into an arid and hoopless waste. \"Ah!\" I exclaimed, \"then he's only a rabbit after all.\" The old thing gave me an unfriendly glance and then missed his hoop badly. I strolled across and sat down beside the newcomer. He smiled at me in a frank and disarming manner. \"What do you think of our courts?\" I said by way of a start. \"Top-hole,\" he replied; \"I'm looking forward to some jolly games on 'em.\" His obvious disregard of perspective annoyed me. In our village, tennis is now played for hygienic reasons only. \"I'm afraid we can't offer you much of a game,\" I said. \"You see there's a war on, and--but perhaps I can fix up a single for you after tea with old Patterby. I believe he was very hot stuff in the seventies.\" \"That's very good of you. I expect he'll knock my head off; I'm no use at the game yet.\" He spoke as though an endless and blissful period of practice was in front of him. \"I suppose you'll be going back soon?\" \"Oh, I'm out of a job just now.\" So it was genuine blatant indifference. I looked round for something with which to slay him. \"I wonder,\" he said thoughtfully, \"if I shall ever find my tennis legs again.\" \"Have you lost them?\" I asked sarcastically. \"Yes, Fritzie got it at Jutland; but these new mark gadgets are top-hole. I can nearly dance the fox-trot with mine already.\" He stretched out the gadget in question and patted it affectionately. [Illustration: \"OLE BILL SEZ 'E 'ARDLY NEVER SEES 'IS MISSUS NAH.\" \"OH! 'OW'S THAT, THEN?\" \"COS SHE'S ALL MORNIN' AN' ARTERNOON IN A SUGAR CUE, AND 'E'S ALL EVENIN' IN A BEER CUE.\"] HEART-TO-HEART TALKS. (_The German CROWN PRINCE and Ex-King CONSTANTINE._) _Crown Prince_. My poor old TINO, you are certainly not looking yourself. Have a drink? _Tino._ No, thank you. I really don't feel up to it. _Tino._ Well, if I must I must (_drinks_). Yes, there's no fault to be found with it. _C. P._ You're looking better already. Now you can tell me all about it. _Tino_ (_bitterly_). Oh, there's not much to tell, except that I was lured on by the promise of help, and when the crisis came there was no help, and so I had to go. _C. P._ (_humming an air_). And so, and so He had, he had to go. _Tino_. I beg your pardon. _C. P._ Sorry, old man, but the words fitted into the tune so nicely I really couldn't resist trying it. Fire ahead. _Tino_. I said, I think, that I was promised help. _C. P._ Yes, you said that all right. _Tino_. And I added that there was no help when the trouble came. _C. P._ You said \"crisis,\" not \"trouble,\" but we won't insist on a trifle like that. Who was the rascal who broke his promise and refused to help you? _Tino_. You know well enough that it was your most gracious father. _C.P._ What! The ALL-HIGHEST! The INMOSTLY BELOVED! The BEYOND-ALL-POWERFUL! Was it really he? And you believed him, did you? What a cunning old fox it is, to be sure. _C. P._ To tell you the truth, I don't take him as seriously as he takes himself. Nobody could. _Tino_. After what has happened I certainly shall not again. It's entirely owing to him that I've lost my kingdom and that the hateful VENIZELOS is back in Athens and that ALEXANDER is seated on my throne. If your beloved father had only left me alone I should have worried through all right. _C. P._ I always tell him he tries to do too much, but he's so infatuated with being an Emperor that there's no holding him. You know he's absolutely convinced that he and the Almighty are on special terms of partnership. _Tino_. I've done a bit myself in that line and I know it doesn't pay. _C. P._ I daresay I shall do it when my time comes. _Tino_. If it ever comes. _C. P._ If it depended on me alone things would go all right. I'm told the people like me, and even the Socialists swear by me. _Tino_. How can you believe such nonsense? I tried to act on that principle and here I am. And poor Russian NICKIE has had an even worse fall--all through believing he had the people on his side. _Tino_. Well, we must try to bear up, even if he should go the way NICKIE has gone. In the meantime the War doesn't look particularly promising, does it? _C. P._ It certainly doesn't; and the Americans will be at our throats directly. Do you know, I never thought very much of HINDENBURG. _Tino_. I suppose you know someone who is younger and could do it much better. [Illustration: SOMEWHERE UP NORTH. _Naval Officer (to native)_. \"CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE THE GOLF COURSE IS?\" Tough fellows, these detectives. Stopping a single bullet would put most men out of action. So convenient for friends to drop in. With his new pedal equipment the British bull-dog should give the German eagle pause. We are asked to state that a recently published work on _Beds and Hunts_ (METHUEN) is not a companion-volume to _Minor Horrors of War_. TO THE MEN WHO HAVE DIED FOR ENGLAND. All ye who fought since England was a name, Because Her soil was holy in your eyes; Who heard Her summons and confessed Her claim, Who flung against a world's time-hallow'd lies The truth of English freedom--fain to give Those last lone moments, careless of your pain, Knowing that only so must England live And win, by sacrifice, the right to reign- Be glad, that still the spur of your bequest Urges your heirs their threefold way along- The way of Toil that craveth not for rest, Clear Honour, and stark Will to punish wrong! The seed ye sow'd God quicken'd with His Breath; The crop hath ripen'd--lo, there is no death! [Illustration: THE LINKS BEING DEVOTED TO ALLOTMENTS, MR. AND MRS. BUNKER-BROWNE PRACTISE APPROACH SHOTS, WITH THE IDEA OF FILLING THEIR BASKET WITH POTATOES AT THE SAME TIME.] (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) [Illustration: [Owing to a scarcity of literary matter at the Front, our soldiers are sometimes reduced to telling each other tales.] Private Jones. \"AND SHE _SAYS_, 'OH! WOT BLINKIN' GREAT EYES YOU 'AVE, GRANDMOTHER!' AND THE WOLF, 'E SAYS, 'ALL THE BETTER TER SEE YER WIV, MY DEAR.'\"]"},"source":{"kind":"string","value":"redpajama-book"},"token_estimate":{"kind":"number","value":5348,"string":"5,348"}}},{"rowIdx":98,"cells":{"text":{"kind":"string","value":"E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, L. Barber, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE We are thus witnessing the foundation of a new era as momentous, if not as dramatic, as Alexander's passage of the Dardanelles. The Ottoman vesture has waxed old, and something can be discerned of the new forms that are emerging from beneath it; their outstanding features are worth our attention. The new Turkish Nationalism is the immediate factor to be reckoned with. It is very new--newer than the Young Turks, and sharply opposed to the original Young Turkish programme--but it has established its ascendancy. It decided Turkey's entry into the War, and is the key to the current policy of the Ottoman Government. \"The Turks realised that, in order to live, they must become essentially Turkish, become a nation, be themselves The Turkish nation turned aside its gaze from the lost territory and looked instead upon Turania, the ideal country of the future.\" On this issue the Nationalists broke a lance with the _Islamjis_, or \"clericals,\" as Tekin Alp prefers to call them. \"Because it is written in the Koran that Islam knows no nationalities, but only Believers, the _Islamjis_ thought that to occupy oneself with national questions was to act against the interests and principles of Islam itself According to the Nationalists, the pronouncement in the Koran was directed exclusively against the very frequent dissensions of clans and parties in the various Arab races.\" (A sneer which is meant to have a modern application.) \"Although the Nationalists proclaim themselves the most zealous followers of Mohammed, nevertheless they do not conceal the fact that their interpretation of Islam is not the same as that of the Arabs. They maintain that the Turks cannot interpret the Koran in the same manner as the Arabs Their idea of God is also different.\" This amazing _Kulturkampf_ is quite possibly a reminiscence of Bismarckian Germany, for Turkish Nationalism is saturated with forgotten European moods, and its vein of Romanticism is as antiquated as the Kaiser's. It has taken Attila to its heart, and rehabilitated Jenghis Khan, Timur, Oghuz, and the rest with the erudition of a Turanian Walter Scott. \"They sought after a judicious mingling of the religious and national impulses. They realised only too clearly that the still abstract ideals of Nationalism could not be expected to attract the masses, the lower classes, composed of uneducated and illiterate people. It was found more expedient to reach these classes under the flag of religion.\" \"Turkey's entry into the War,\" he writes, \"was unwelcome to Turkish society in Constantinople, whose sympathies were with France, as well as to the mass of the people, but the Panislamic propaganda and the military dictatorship were able to stifle all opposition. The proclamation of the 'Holy War' produced a general agitation of the Mohammedan against the Christian elements in the Empire, and the Christian nationalities had soon good reason to fear that Turkish chauvinism would make use of Mohammedan fanaticism to make the War popular with the mass of the Mohammedan population.\" Thus in the Armenian atrocities the Young Turks made Panislamism and Turkish Nationalism work together for their ends, but the development of their policy shows the Islamic element receding and the Nationalist gaining ground. \"The formation of new parties in the Chamber or in the country must be suppressed and the emergence of new 'liberal ideas' prevented. Turkey must become a really Mohammedan country, and Moslem ideas and Moslem influence must be preponderant. Every other religious propaganda must be suppressed. The existence of the Empire depends on the strength of the Young Turkish Party and the suppression of all antagonistic ideas \"All Ottomans are not Turks,\" he said, \"and if the Empire were to be considered purely Turkish, then all the non-Turkish elements would be foreign to it, instead of being living members of the political body known as the Ottoman Empire, fighting the common fight for it and for Islam.\" To this the Professor is reported to have replied: \"Although you are an Arab, yet you and your race are subject to Turkey. Have not the Turks colonised your country, and have they not conquered it by the sword? The Ottoman State, which you plead, is nothing but a social trick, to which you resort in order to attain your ends. As to religion, it has no connexion with politics. We shall soon march forward in the name of Turkey and the Turkish flag, casting aside religion, as it is only a personal and secondary question. You and your nation must realise that you are Turks, and that there is no such thing as Arab nationality and an Arab fatherland.\" It is said that the Arab officers present handed in a joint protest to the Minister of War, asking for the Professor's dismissal, and that Enver Bey's answer was to have them all sent to the front-line trenches. Certainly the Turkish Nationalists have not concealed their attitude towards the Arabs since the War began. And Ahmed Sherif Bey, again, has written as follows in the _Tanin_: \"The Arabs speak their own language and are as ignorant of Turkish as if their country were not a dependency of Turkey. It is the business of the _Porte_ to make them forget their own language and to impose upon them instead that of the nation which rules them. If the Porte loses sight of this duty it will be digging its grave with its own hands, for if the Arabs do not forget their language, their history, and their customs, they will seek to restore their ancient empire on the ruins of Ottomanism and of Turkish rule in Asia.\" A Turkish pamphleteer wrote that \"the Arabs have been a misfortune to Turkey,\" and that \"a Turkish conqueror's war-horse is better than the Prophet of any other nation.\" This pamphlet was distributed in the Caucasus at the Ottoman Government's expense as Turkish propaganda. But the aims of Turkish Nationalists are not limited by the Ottoman frontiers. If they are resolved to clear their Empire of every non-Turkish element, that is only a step towards extending it over everything Turkish that lies outside. The Turks have not only aliens to get rid of, but an irredenta to win. \"Turkish irredentism may be directed towards material or moral reforms according to circumstances. If the geographical position favours the venture, the Turks can free their brothers from foreign rule. In the other case, they can carry it on on moral or intellectual lines. \"Our participation in the world war represents the vindication of our national ideal. The ideal of our nation and people leads us towards the destruction of our Muscovite enemy, in order to obtain thereby a natural frontier to our empire, which should include and unite all branches of our race.\" \"Observers,\" he writes, \"who, like myself, are Macedonians, and, like myself, had ample opportunity of gaining an intimate knowledge of the irredentist propaganda of the Bulgars, Greeks, Serbs, and Vlachs, are able to judge the significance of this striving after a national ideal, and how sweet and inspiring it is to go through the greatest dangers for such a cause. This is best illustrated by a few living examples\" (which he proceeds to give) \"Will the Young Turks emulate the self-sacrifice of these men?\" Russia and Persia are the fields marked out for such activity: \"In some places ordinary propaganda is sufficient, but in hotly-contested territory recourse is to be had to the more violent measures used in Macedonia. The neighbouring land of Persia is without doubt the best of all countries with Turkish population for spreading the new ideas, and it has been found that simple propaganda is amply sufficient to produce a satisfactory effect on this fruitful soil.\" \"There is no power in Persia to put down such a movement, because it could do no harm to anyone. The nationalisation of the Persian Turks would even be a great and unexpected help to the Persian Government Persia would be situated with regard to the Turkish Government as Bavaria towards Prussia.\" And this is only a stage towards a higher goal: \"The united Turks should form the centre of gravity of the world of Islam. The Arabs of Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, the Persians, Afghans, etc., must enjoy complete independence in their own affairs, but outwardly the world of Islam must present a perfectly united front.\" The Arabs of North Africa and the Shias of Iran can appraise the \"independence\" held out to them by the \"unity\" which Turkish Nationalism has been presenting already to Syria and Irak, the Yemen and the Hedjaz. But Tekin Alp deals even less tenderly with Russia. In explaining the bond of interest between Turkish Nationalism and Germany he remarks that The \"et cetera\" proves to be nothing less than the province of Kazan: This Nationalism, which dominates Turkey's present, has also decided the question of her future. If such a movement has taken possession of the Osmanlis, the Osmanlis must lose possession of their Empire. Turkish Nationalism now directs the Ottoman Government, wields its pretensions, is master within its frontiers; and how does it use its mastery? To make a hell of Armenia and Syria, and to plot out new Macedonias in Persia and the heart of Russia. Thus Turkish Nationalism shows where the Turk is intolerable and must go, but it also shows where he has some right to stay. If the Turkish Nationalists had confined themselves to economic weapons, the Turks' economic ineptitude would have prevented them from doing serious harm; but by abusing the political and military powers of the Ottoman State to perpetrate the recent atrocities they have struck a mortal blow at the prosperity of Western Asia. And this is the universal judgment of those in a position to know. The German memorialist presses the indictment: What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met his fate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind? Dr. Wiedenfeld drives this home. \"The importance of the Syrian railway system lies in this, that, if the need arose, it would be the direct instrument for the exercise of pressure upon England supposing that German-Austro-Turkish co-operation became necessary in the direction of Egypt.\" Germany's control over Turkey depends upon the maintenance of a corrupt minority in power--too weak and corrupt to remain in it without Germany's guarantee, and corrupt enough, when secured in it, to put it at Germany's disposal. A free hand at home in return for servitude in diplomacy and war--the deal is called \"Hegemony,\" and is as old as Ancient Greece. By her hegemony over the Ottoman Government Germany threatens the British and Russian Empires from all the Ottoman frontiers; and with the free hand that is their price the Young Turks inflict on all lands and peoples within those frontiers whatever evils conduce to the maintenance of their pretensions. As Rohrbach and Wiedenfeld point out, this political understanding underlies all Germany's economic efforts in Western Asia, and we can see how it has warped them from their proper ends. The track of the Bagdad Railway, for example, has not been selected in the economic interests of the lands and peoples which it ostensibly serves. Dr. Rohrbach himself admits that \"If merely economic and not political advantages were taken into account,\" Dr. Rohrbach concedes, \"the question might perhaps be raised whether it would not be better to leave the Anatolian section alone altogether and begin the Bagdad Railway from Seleucia\" (on the Syrian coast). \"The future export trade in grain, wool, and cotton will in any case do all it can to lengthen the cheap sea-passage and shorten correspondingly the section on which it must pay railway freights. The fact that the route connecting Bagdad with the Mediterranean coast in the neighbourhood of Antioch is the oldest, greatest, and still most promising trade-route of Western Asia is independent of all railway projects.\" \"The necessity,\" he declares, \"consists in Turkey's military interests, which obviously would be very poorly served\" (by German railway enterprise) \"if troops could not be transported by train without a break from Bagdad and Mosul to the extremity of Anatolia, and _vice versa_.\" \"Germany has an important interest in effecting and maintaining contact with the Armenian nation. We have set before ourselves the necessary and legitimate aim of spreading and enrooting German influence in Turkey, not only by military missions and the construction of railways, but also by the establishment of intellectual relations, by the work of German _Kultur_--in a word, by moral conquests; and we are determined, by pacific means, to reach an amicable understanding with the Turks and the other nations in the Turkish Empire. Our ulterior object in this is to strengthen the Turkish Empire internally with the aid of German science, education, and training, and for this work the Armenians are indispensable.\" \"For the rise of the carpet industry,\" our German memorialised writes, \"Turkey has to thank capitalists and exporters who are almost all Armenians, Greeks, Jews, or Europeans. Like the cotton cultivation introduced by Germany into Cilicia, this carpet industry, in the eastern provinces, has been deprived of the hands essential to it by the Armenian deportations.\" \"I have nothing to say,\" writes Dr. Niepage, the German teacher from Aleppo, \"about the opinion of the German officers in Turkey. I often noticed among them an ominous silence or a convulsive effort to change the subject, when any German of warm feelings and independent judgment talked in their presence of the fearful sufferings of the Armenians.\" This moral bankruptcy is more fatal to the future of Germany in Western Asia than all the material havoc which the Armenian deportations have caused. For Dr. Niepage is convinced that the blood of the Armenians will be on Germany's head: \"'The teaching of the Germans,' is the simple Turk's explanation, and more sensitive Mohammedans, Turks and Arabs alike, cannot believe that their own Government has ordered these horrors. They lay all excesses at the Germans' door, for the Germans, during the War, are regarded as Turkey's schoolmasters in everything. The mollahs declare in the mosques that the German officers, and not the Sublime Porte, have ordered the maltreatment and extermination of the Armenians Others say: 'Perhaps the German Government has its hands tied by certain agreements defining its powers, or perhaps it is not an opportune moment for intervention.' \"We think it our duty to draw attention to the fact that our educational work in Turkey forfeits its moral basis and the natives' esteem, if the German Government is not in a position to prevent the brutalities inflicted here upon the wives and children of murdered Armenians. \"If we persist in treating the massacres of Christians as an internal affair of Turkey, which is only important to us because it ensures us the Turks' friendship, then we must change the orientation of our German _Kulturpolitik_. We must stop sending German teachers to Turkey, and we teachers must give up telling our pupils in Turkey about German poets and philosophers, German culture and German ideals, to say nothing of German Christianity. \"The things of which everybody here has been a witness for months past remain as a stain on Germany's shield in the minds of Oriental nations.\" Happily there are other representatives of culture, other indigenous nationalities, other possibilities of economic development, which will remain in Western Asia when the Turk and German have gone, and which may be equal to repairing the ruin they will leave behind. \"The Oriental Churches need assistance from their brethren abroad. Our object is not to subvert them: you are not sent among those Churches to proselytise. Let the Armenian remain an Armenian if he will, the Greek a Greek, the Nestorian a Nestorian, the Oriental an Oriental. \"The suppression of the schools founded and directed by ecclesiastical missions or by individuals belonging to enemy nations is as important a measure as the abolition of the Capitulations. Thanks to their schools, foreigners were able to exercise great moral influence over the young men of the country, and they were virtually in charge of its spiritual and intellectual guidance. By closing them the Government has put an end to a situation as humiliating as it was dangerous.\" But the missionaries' spirit was something they could not destroy. Germany may not relish her kinship with these lost Teutonic tribes, but Dr. Davis-Trietsch makes a satirical exposure of such scruples: \"In this unenviable competition for the prize of hate, Turkey, too, has a word to say, for the unspeakable Turk' is a rhetorical commonplace of English politics.\" Having thus isolated the Jews from humanity and pilloried them with the German and the Turk, the writer expounds their function in the Turco-German system: And from this he passes to a wider vision: Dr. Trietsch himself accepts this settlement, but does not abandon his idea: Other Powers than Germany may take these possibilities to heart. Here far-sighted engineers and stronghanded rulers turned the waters of Babylon into waters of life, and the _Sawad_ became a great heart of civilisation, breathing in man-power--Sumerians and Amorites and Kassites and Aramaeans and Chaldeans and Persians and Greeks and Arabs--and breathing out the works of man--grain and wool and Babylonish garments, inventions still used in our machine-shops, and emotions still felt in our religion. Harnessed in the irrigation channels, the Tigris and Euphrates had become as mighty forces of production as the Nile and the Ganges, the Yangtse and the Hoang-Ho. \"But even,\" he continues, \"if the Turks thought of foreign colonisation in Syria and Mesopotamia, to hold the Arabs in check\" (the political factor again), \"that would be little help to us Germans, for only very limited portions of those countries have a climate in which Germans can work on the land or perform any kind of heavy manual labour.\" And Germany herself is hard up for men. \"For all prospective developments in Turkey,\" writes Dr. Trietsch, \"not merely scientific knowledge, capital, and organisation are wanted, but men, and Germany has no resources in men worth speaking of for opening up the Islamic world.\" That narrows the field to India and Egypt, and drives Turco-German policy upon the horns of a dilemma: \"In due time,\" the memorandum proceeds, \"a comprehensive scheme for the whole of Mesopotamia must be carried out, but, apart from the question of expense, it is clear that the public works involved will not be justified until Turkey is in a position to colonise these extensive districts, and this question cannot be considered till we have succeeded in getting rid of the Capitulations.\" This is the Ottoman pretension. Egypt, rid of the Osmanli, and India, where he never ruled, have kept their ancient wealth of harvests and population, and have man-power to spare for the reclamation of the _Sawad_. All the means are at hand for bringing the land to life--the water, the engineer, the capital, the labour; only the Ottoman pretension stands in the way, and condemns the _Sawad_ to lie dead and unharvested so long as it endures. Turkey, which claims the present in Western Asia, is nothing but an overthrow of the past and an obstruction of the future."},"source":{"kind":"string","value":"redpajama-book"},"token_estimate":{"kind":"number","value":4170,"string":"4,170"}}},{"rowIdx":99,"cells":{"text":{"kind":"string","value":"Produced by David Widger, Ted Garvin and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER And now I lift the curtain that hangs between here and No-man's-land. Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand. How Robin Hood Came To Be An Outlaw Robin Hood And The Tinker The Shooting Match At Nottingham Town Will Stutely Rescued By His Companions Robin Hood Turns Butcher Little John Goes To Nottingham Fair How Little John Lived At The Sheriff's Little John And The Tanner Of Blyth Robin Hood And Will Scarlet The Adventure With Midge, The Miller's Son Robin Hood And Allan A Dale Robin Hood Seeks The Curtal Friar Robin Hood Compasses A Marriage Robin Hood Aids A Sorrowful Knight How Sir Richard Of The Lea Paid His Debts Little John Turns Barefoot Friar Robin Hood Turns Beggar Robin Hood Shoots Before Queen Eleanor The Chase Of Robin Hood Robin Hood And Guy Of Gisbourne King Richard Comes To Sherwood Forest Epilogue Giving an account of Robin Hood and his adventure with the King's Foresters. Also telling how his band gathered around him, and of the merry adventure that gained him his good right hand man, the famous Little John. How Robin Hood Came to Be an Outlaw And now I will tell how it came about that Robin Hood fell afoul of the law. Then Robin grew angry, for no stripling likes to be taunted with his green years. \"Now,\" quoth he, \"my bow and eke mine arrows are as good as shine; and moreover, I go to the shooting match at Nottingham Town, which same has been proclaimed by our good Sheriff of Nottinghamshire; there I will shoot with other stout yeomen, for a prize has been offered of a fine butt of ale.\" And another cried, \"He will be taking ale with his milk next.\" Then Robin took his good yew bow in his hand, and placing the tip at his instep, he strung it right deftly; then he nocked a broad clothyard arrow and, raising the bow, drew the gray goose feather to his ear; the next moment the bowstring rang and the arrow sped down the glade as a sparrowhawk skims in a northern wind. High leaped the noblest hart of all the herd, only to fall dead, reddening the green path with his heart's blood. \"Nay,\" cried he, \"the wager is none of thine, and get thee gone, straightway, or, by all the saints of heaven, I'll baste thy sides until thou wilt ne'er be able to walk again.\" \"Knowest thou not,\" said another, \"that thou hast killed the King's deer, and, by the laws of our gracious lord and sovereign King Harry, thine ears should be shaven close to thy head?\" Never a word said Robin Hood, but he looked at the foresters with a grim face; then, turning on his heel, strode away from them down the forest glade. But his heart was bitterly angry, for his blood was hot and youthful and prone to boil. \"Ye said I was no archer,\" cried he aloud, \"but say so now again!\" The shaft flew straight; the archer fell forward with a cry, and lay on his face upon the ground, his arrows rattling about him from out of his quiver, the gray goose shaft wet with his; heart's blood. Then, before the others could gather their wits about them, Robin Hood was gone into the depths of the greenwood. Some started after him, but not with much heart, for each feared to suffer the death of his fellow; so presently they all came and lifted the dead man up and bore him away to Nottingham Town. Meanwhile Robin Hood ran through the greenwood. Gone was all the joy and brightness from everything, for his heart was sick within him, and it was borne in upon his soul that he had slain a man. \"Nay,\" answered the stranger, \"then stand back shine own self, for the better man, I wet, am I.\" \"That will we presently see,\" quoth Robin, \"and meanwhile stand thou where thou art, or else, by the bright brow of Saint AElfrida, I will show thee right good Nottingham play with a clothyard shaft betwixt thy ribs.\" \"Now,\" quoth the stranger, \"I will tan thy hide till it be as many colors as a beggar's cloak, if thou darest so much as touch a string of that same bow that thou holdest in thy hands.\" \"Thou pratest like an ass,\" said Robin, \"for I could send this shaft clean through thy proud heart before a curtal friar could say grace over a roast goose at Michaelmastide.\" \"And thou pratest like a coward,\" answered the stranger, \"for thou standest there with a good yew bow to shoot at my heart, while I have nought in my hand but a plain blackthorn staff wherewith to meet thee.\" \"Now,\" quoth Robin, \"by the faith of my heart, never have I had a coward's name in all my life before. I will lay by my trusty bow and eke my arrows, and if thou darest abide my coming, I will go and cut a cudgel to test thy manhood withal.\" \"Ay, marry, that will I abide thy coming, and joyously, too,\" quoth the stranger; whereupon he leaned sturdily upon his staff to await Robin. \"Marry, that meeteth my whole heart!\" cried the stranger, twirling his staff above his head, betwixt his fingers and thumb, until it whistled again. \"And where art thou now, my good lad?\" shouted the stranger, roaring with laughter. \"Oh, in the flood and floating adown with the tide,\" cried Robin, nor could he forbear laughing himself at his sorry plight. Then, gaining his feet, he waded to the bank, the little fish speeding hither and thither, all frightened at his splashing. \"Give me thy hand,\" cried he, when he had reached the bank. \"I must needs own thou art a brave and a sturdy soul and, withal, a good stout stroke with the cudgels. By this and by that, my head hummeth like to a hive of bees on a hot June day.\" \"And thou,\" quoth the stranger, laughing, \"takest thy cudgeling like a brave heart and a stout yeoman.\" \"Good master,\" cried Will, \"how is this? Truly thou art all wet from head to foot, and that to the very skin.\" \"Why, marry,\" answered jolly Robin, \"yon stout fellow hath tumbled me neck and crop into the water and hath given me a drubbing beside.\" \"Then shall he not go without a ducking and eke a drubbing himself!\" cried Will Stutely. \"Have at him, lads!\" Then Will and a score of yeomen leaped upon the stranger, but though they sprang quickly they found him ready and felt him strike right and left with his stout staff, so that, though he went down with press of numbers, some of them rubbed cracked crowns before he was overcome. \"That know I not,\" quoth the stranger surlily, for he was angry at being so tumbled about. \"If ye handle yew bow and apple shaft no better than ye do oaken cudgel, I wot ye are not fit to be called yeomen in my country; but if there be any man here that can shoot a better shaft than I, then will I bethink me of joining with you.\" \"Ay, marry, that will I,\" answered he. \"Give me a good stout bow and a fair broad arrow, and if I hit it not, strip me and beat me blue with bowstrings.\" Then he chose the stoutest bow among them all, next to Robin's own, and a straight gray goose shaft, well-feathered and smooth, and stepping to the mark--while all the band, sitting or lying upon the greensward, watched to see him shoot--he drew the arrow to his cheek and loosed the shaft right deftly, sending it so straight down the path that it clove the mark in the very center. \"Aha!\" cried he, \"mend thou that if thou canst\"; while even the yeomen clapped their hands at so fair a shot. \"That is a keen shot indeed,\" quoth Robin. \"Mend it I cannot, but mar it I may, perhaps.\" Then taking up his own good stout bow and nocking an arrow with care, he shot with his very greatest skill. Straight flew the arrow, and so true that it lit fairly upon the stranger's shaft and split it into splinters. Then all the yeomen leaped to their feet and shouted for joy that their master had shot so well. \"Then have I gained a right good man this day,\" quoth jolly Robin. \"What name goest thou by, good fellow?\" \"Men call me John Little whence I came,\" answered the stranger. Then Will Stutely, who loved a good jest, spoke up. \"Nay, fair little stranger,\" said he, \"I like not thy name and fain would I have it otherwise. Little art thou indeed, and small of bone and sinew, therefore shalt thou be christened Little John, and I will be thy godfather.\" Then Robin Hood and all his band laughed aloud until the stranger began to grow angry. \"An thou make a jest of me,\" quoth he to Will Stutely, \"thou wilt have sore bones and little pay, and that in short season.\" \"Nay, good friend,\" said Robin Hood, \"bottle thine anger, for the name fitteth thee well. Little John shall thou be called henceforth, and Little John shall it be. So come, my merry men, we will prepare a christening feast for this fair infant.\" Then when the feast was done Will Stutely spoke up. \"It is now time, I ween, to christen our bonny babe, is it not so, merry boys?\" And \"Aye! Aye!\" cried all, laughing till the woods echoed with their mirth. \"That do I,\" answered Will Stutely. \"And what name callest thou him?\" \"Little John call I him.\" \"Now Little John,\" quoth the mock priest, \"thou hast not lived heretofore, but only got thee along through the world, but henceforth thou wilt live indeed. When thou livedst not thou wast called John Little, but now that thou dost live indeed, Little John shalt thou be called, so christen I thee.\" And at these last words he emptied the pot of ale upon Little John's head. Robin Hood and the Tinker Then he called up a messenger in whom he placed great trust, and bade him saddle his horse and make ready to go to Lincoln Town to see whether he could find anyone there that would do his bidding and win the reward. So that same morning the messenger started forth upon his errand. The messenger was glad enough to sit down along with the others who were there, for his limbs were weary and the ale was good. \"Now art thou the man for my farthing,\" cried the messenger. \"And back thou goest with me to Nottingham Town.\" \"Nay,\" quoth the Tinker, shaking his head slowly from side to side. \"Go I with no man gin it be not with mine own free will.\" \"Nay, nay,\" said the messenger, \"no man is there in Nottinghamshire could make thee go against thy will, thou brave fellow.\" \"Ay, that be I brave,\" said the Tinker. \"Ay, marry,\" said the messenger, \"thou art a brave lad; but our good Sheriff hath offered fourscore angels of bright gold to whosoever shall serve the warrant upon Robin Hood; though little good will it do.\" \"Then I will go with thee, lad. Do but wait till I get my bag and hammer, and my cudgel. Ay, let' me but meet this same Robin Hood, and let me see whether he will not mind the King's warrant.\" So, after having paid their score, the messenger, with the Tinker striding beside his nag, started back to Nottingham again. \"Halloa, good friend!\" cried Robin. \"Halloa!\" cried Robin again. \"Halloa! Art thou deaf, man? Good friend, say I!\" \"And who art thou dost so boldly check a fair song?\" quoth the Tinker, stopping in his singing. \"Halloa, shine own self, whether thou be good friend or no. But let me tell thee, thou stout fellow, gin thou be a good friend it were well for us both; but gin thou be no good friend it were ill for thee.\" \"And whence comest thou, my lusty blade?\" quoth Robin. \"I come from Banbury,\" answered the Tinker. \"Alas!\" quoth Robin, \"I hear there is sad news this merry morn.\" \"Ha! Is it indeed so?\" cried the Tinker eagerly. \"Prythee tell it speedily, for I am a tinker by trade, as thou seest, and as I am in my trade I am greedy for news, even as a priest is greedy for farthings.\" \"Now by the pewter platter of Saint Dunstan,\" cried the Tinker, \"I have a good part of a mind to baste thy hide for thine ill jest. But gin men be put in the stocks for drinking ale and beer, I trow thou wouldst not lose thy part.\" Loud laughed Robin and cried, \"Now well taken, Tinker, well taken! Why, thy wits are like beer, and do froth up most when they grow sour! But right art thou, man, for I love ale and beer right well. Therefore come straightway with me hard by to the Sign of the Blue Boar, and if thou drinkest as thou appearest--and I wot thou wilt not belie thy looks--I will drench thy throat with as good homebrewed as ever was tapped in all broad Nottinghamshire.\" \"Now by my faith,\" said the Tinker, \"thou art a right good fellow in spite of thy scurvy jests. I love thee, my sweet chuck, and gin I go not with thee to that same Blue Boar thou mayst call me a heathen.\" \"Tell me thy news, good friend, I prythee,\" quoth Robin as they trudged along together, \"for tinkers, I ween, are all as full of news as an egg of meat.\" \"Ay, marry, that I do somewhat,\" quoth Robin, \"and I have seen him this very morn. But, Tinker, men say that he is but a sad, sly thief. Thou hadst better watch thy warrant, man, or else he may steal it out of thy very pouch.\" \"Let him but try!\" cried the Tinker. \"Sly may he be, but sly am I, too. I would I had him here now, man to man!\" And he made his heavy cudgel to spin again. \"But what manner of man is he, lad? \"Much like myself,\" said Robin, laughing, \"and in height and build and age nigh the same; and he hath blue eyes, too.\" \"Nay,\" quoth the Tinker, \"thou art but a green youth. I thought him to be a great bearded man. Nottingham men feared him so.\" \"Truly, he is not so old nor so stout as thou art,\" said Robin. \"But men do call him a right deft hand at quarterstaff.\" \"Ay, that will I,\" quoth Robin, \"but show me thy warrant, man, until I see whether it be good or no.\" \"That will I not do, even to mine own brother,\" answered the Tinker. \"No man shall see my warrant till I serve it upon yon fellow's own body.\" \"So be it,\" quoth Robin. \"And thou show it not to me I know not to whom thou wilt show it. But here we are at the Sign of the Blue Boar, so let us in and taste his brown October.\" \"By Our Lady,\" said the Tinker, after a long draught of the ale, \"yon same Withold of Tamworth--a right good Saxon name, too, I would have thee know--breweth the most humming ale that e'er passed the lips of Wat o' the Crabstaff.\" \"Drink, man, drink,\" cried Robin, only wetting his own lips meanwhile. \"Ho, landlord! Bring my friend another pot of the same. And now for a song, my jolly blade.\" \"Ay, that will I give thee a song, my lovely fellow,\" quoth the Tinker, \"for I never tasted such ale in all my days before. By Our Lady, it doth make my head hum even now! Hey, Dame Hostess, come listen, an thou wouldst hear a song, and thou too, thou bonny lass, for never sing I so well as when bright eyes do look upon me the while.\" Then Robin Hood laughed aloud and quickly took the warrant from out the Tinker's pouch with his deft fingers. \"Sly art thou, Tinker,\" quoth he, \"but not yet, I bow, art thou as sly as that same sly thief Robin Hood.\" At this the host smiled slyly, as though saying to himself the rustic saw, \"Teach a magpie to suck eggs.\" \"Ho, landlord!\" cried he, \"whither hath that knave gone that was with me but now?\" \"What knave meaneth Your Worship?\" quoth the landlord, calling the Tinker Worship to soothe him, as a man would pour oil upon angry water. \"I saw no knave with Your Worship, for I swear no man would dare call that man knave so nigh to Sherwood Forest. A right stout yeoman I saw with Your Worship, but I thought that Your Worship knew him, for few there be about here that pass him by and know him not.\" \"Now, how should I, that ne'er have squealed in your sty, know all the swine therein? Who was he, then, an thou knowest him so well?\" \"Now, by'r Lady!\" cried the Tinker hastily, and in a deep voice like an angry bull, \"thou didst see me come into thine inn, I, a staunch, honest craftsman, and never told me who my company was, well knowing thine own self who he was. Now, I have a right round piece of a mind to crack thy knave's pate for thee!\" Then he took up his cudgel and looked at the landlord as though he would smite him where he stood. \"Nay,\" cried the host, throwing up his elbow, for he feared the blow, \"how knew I that thou knewest him not?\" \"Well and truly thankful mayst thou be,\" quoth the Tinker, \"that I be a patient man and so do spare thy bald crown, else wouldst thou ne'er cheat customer again. But as for this same knave Robin Hood, I go straightway to seek him, and if I do not score his knave's pate, cut my staff into fagots and call me woman.\" So saying, he gathered himself together to depart. \"Nay,\" quoth the landlord, standing in front of him and holding out his arms like a gooseherd driving his flock, for money made him bold, \"thou goest not till thou hast paid me my score.\" \"But did not he pay thee?\" \"But nought have I to pay thee with, good fellow,\" quoth the Tinker. So saying, he strode away toward the forest, talking to himself, while the landlord and his worthy dame and Maken stood looking after him, and laughed when he had fairly gone. \"Robin and I stripped yon ass of his pack main neatly,\" quoth the landlord. Now it happened about this time that Robin Hood was going through the forest to Fosse Way, to see what was to be seen there, for the moon was full and the night gave promise of being bright. In his hand he carried his stout oaken staff, and at his side hung his bugle horn. As thus he walked up a forest path, whistling, down another path came the Tinker, muttering to himself and shaking his head like an angry bull; and so, at a sudden bend, they met sharply face to face. Each stood still for a time, and then Robin spoke: \"Halloa, my sweet bird,\" said he, laughing merrily, \"how likest thou thine ale? Wilt not sing to me another song?\" \"Now yield thee,\" quoth the Tinker, \"for thou art my captive; and if thou do not, I will beat thy pate to a pudding.\" \"Ay,\" quoth the Tinker, \"blow thou mayest, but go thou must with me to Nottingham Town, for the Sheriff would fain see thee there. Now wilt thou yield thee, or shall I have to break thy pretty head?\" \"An I must drink sour ale, I must,\" quoth Robin, \"but never have I yielded me to man before, and that without wound or mark upon my body. Nor, when I bethink me, will I yield now. Ho, my merry men! Come quickly!\" \"How now, good master,\" cried Little John, \"what need hast thou that thou dost wind thy horn so loudly?\" \"There stands a tinker,\" quoth Robin, \"that would fain take me to Nottingham, there to hang upon the gallows tree.\" \"Then shall he himself hang forthwith,\" cried Little John, and he and the others made at the Tinker, to seize him. \"Ay, marry, will I join with you all,\" quoth the Tinker, \"for I love a merry life, and I love thee, good master, though thou didst thwack my ribs and cheat me into the bargain. Fain am I to own thou art both a stouter and a slyer man than I; so I will obey thee and be thine own true servant.\" So all turned their steps to the forest depths, where the Tinker was to live henceforth. For many a day he sang ballads to the band, until the famous Allan a Dale joined them, before whose sweet voice all others seemed as harsh as a raven's; but of him we will learn hereafter. The Shooting Match at Nottingham Town Then he bade all his servants and retainers to make ready to go to London Town, to see and speak with the King. In London King Henry and his fair Queen Eleanor held their court, gay with ladies in silks and satins and velvets and cloth of gold, and also brave knights and gallant courtiers. Thither came the Sheriff and was shown into the King's presence. \"A boon, a boon,\" quoth he, as he knelt upon the ground. \"Now what wouldst thou have?\" said the King. \"Let us hear what may be thy desires.\" \"O good my Lord and Sovereign,\" spake the Sheriff, \"in Sherwood Forest in our own good shire of Nottingham, liveth a bold outlaw whose name is Robin Hood.\" \"In good sooth,\" said the King, \"his doings have reached even our own royal ears. He is a saucy, rebellious varlet, yet, I am fain to own, a right merry soul withal.\" \"But hearken, O my most gracious Sovereign,\" said the Sheriff. \"I sent a warrant to him with thine own royal seal attached, by a right lusty knave, but he beat the messenger and stole the warrant. And he killeth thy deer and robbeth thine own liege subjects even upon the great highways.\" \"Why, how now,\" quoth the King wrathfully. \"What wouldst thou have me do? Comest thou not to me with a great array of men-at-arms and retainers, and yet art not able to take a single band of lusty knaves without armor on breast, in thine own county! What wouldst thou have me do? Art thou not my Sheriff? Are not my laws in force in Nottinghamshire? Canst thou not take thine own course against those that break the laws or do any injury to thee or thine? Go, get thee gone, and think well; devise some plan of thine own, but trouble me no further. But look well to it, Master Sheriff, for I will have my laws obeyed by all men within my kingdom, and if thou art not able to enforce them thou art no sheriff for me. So look well to thyself, I say, or ill may befall thee as well as all the thieving knaves in Nottinghamshire. When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as well as chaff.\" \"Aha!\" cried he suddenly, smiting his hand upon his thigh \"I have it now! Ride on, my merry men all, and let us get back to Nottingham Town as speedily as we may. And mark well my words: before a fortnight is passed, that evil knave Robin Hood will be safely clapped into Nottingham gaol.\" But what was the Sheriff's plan? \"Now,\" thought the Sheriff, \"could I but persuade Robin nigh to Nottingham Town so that I could find him, I warrant I would lay hands upon him so stoutly that he would never get away again.\" Then of a sudden it came to him like a flash that were he to proclaim a great shooting match and offer some grand prize, Robin Hood might be overpersuaded by his spirit to come to the butts; and it was this thought which caused him to cry \"Aha!\" and smite his palm upon his thigh. So, as soon as he had returned safely to Nottingham, he sent messengers north and south, and east and west, to proclaim through town, hamlet, and countryside, this grand shooting match, and everyone was bidden that could draw a longbow, and the prize was to be an arrow of pure beaten gold. Then young David of Doncaster spoke up and said, \"Now listen, I pray thee, good master, unto what I say. I have come straight from our friend Eadom o' the Blue Boar, and there I heard the full news of this same match. But, master, I know from him, and he got it from the Sheriff's man Ralph o' the Scar, that this same knavish Sheriff hath but laid a trap for thee in this shooting match and wishes nothing so much as to see thee there. So go not, good master, for I know right well he doth seek to beguile thee, but stay within the greenwood lest we all meet dole and woe.\" \"Now,\" quoth Robin, \"thou art a wise lad and keepest thine ears open and thy mouth shut, as becometh a wise and crafty woodsman. But shall we let it be said that the Sheriff of Nottingham did cow bold Robin Hood and sevenscore as fair archers as are in all merry England? Nay, good David, what thou tellest me maketh me to desire the prize even more than I else should do. But what sayeth our good gossip Swanthold? Is it not 'A hasty man burneth his mouth, and the fool that keepeth his eyes shut falleth into the pit'? Thus he says, truly, therefore we must meet guile with guile. Now some of you clothe yourselves as curtal friars, and some as rustic peasants, and some as tinkers, or as beggars, but see that each man taketh a good bow or broadsword, in case need should arise. As for myself, I will shoot for this same golden arrow, and should I win it, we will hang it to the branches of our good greenwood tree for the joy of all the band. How like you the plan, my merry men all?\" Then \"Good, good!\" cried all the band right heartily. But now all the benches were filled with guests, lord and lady, burgher and dame, when at last the Sheriff himself came with his lady, he riding with stately mien upon his milk-white horse and she upon her brown filly. Upon his head he wore a purple velvet cap, and purple velvet was his robe, all trimmed about with rich ermine; his jerkin and hose were of sea-green silk, and his shoes of black velvet, the pointed toes fastened to his garters with golden chains. A golden chain hung about his neck, and at his collar was a great carbuncle set in red gold. His lady was dressed in blue velvet, all trimmed with swan's down. So they made a gallant sight as they rode along side by side, and all the people shouted from where they crowded across the space from the gentlefolk; so the Sheriff and his lady came to their place, where men-at-arms, with hauberk and spear, stood about, waiting for them. Then the herald stood forth and loudly proclaimed the rules of the game as follows: \"Then,\" quoth the Sheriff, smiting his thigh angrily, \"yon knave is a coward as well as a rogue, and dares not show his face among good men and true.\" \"Now by our gracious Lady fair,\" quoth old Sir Amyas o' the Dell, who, bowed with fourscore years and more, sat near the Sheriff, \"ne'er saw I such archery in all my life before, yet have I seen the best hands at the longbow for threescore years and more.\" \"Now, shoot thou well, Gilbert,\" cried the Sheriff, \"and if thine be the best shaft, fivescore broad silver pennies will I give to thee beside the prize.\" \"Truly I will do my best,\" quoth Gilbert right sturdily. \"A man cannot do aught but his best, but that will I strive to do this day.\" So saying, he drew forth a fair smooth arrow with a broad feather and fitted it deftly to the string, then drawing his bow with care he sped the shaft. Straight flew the arrow and lit fairly in the clout, a finger's-breadth from the center. \"A Gilbert, a Gilbert!\" shouted all the crowd; and, \"Now, by my faith,\" cried the Sheriff, smiting his hands together, \"that is a shrewd shot.\" \"Now by all the saints in Paradise!\" cried the Sheriff, \"that is a lovely shaft in very truth!\" \"Well done, Gilbert!\" cried the Sheriff right joyously. \"Fain am I to believe the prize is thine, and right fairly won. Now, thou ragged knave, let me see thee shoot a better shaft than that.\" Then the Sheriff came down from his dais and drew near, in all his silks and velvets, to where the tattered stranger stood leaning upon his stout bow, while the good folk crowded around to see the man who shot so wondrously well. \"Here, good fellow,\" quoth the Sheriff, \"take thou the prize, and well and fairly hast thou won it, I bow. What may be thy name, and whence comest thou?\" \"Men do call me Jock o' Teviotdale, and thence am I come,\" said the stranger. \"Then, by Our Lady, Jock, thou art the fairest archer that e'er mine eyes beheld, and if thou wilt join my service I will clothe thee with a better coat than that thou hast upon thy back; thou shalt eat and drink of the best, and at every Christmastide fourscore marks shall be thy wage. I trow thou drawest better bow than that same coward knave Robin Hood, that dared not show his face here this day. Say, good fellow, wilt thou join my service?\" \"Nay, that will I not,\" quoth the stranger roughly. \"I will be mine own, and no man in all merry England shall be my master.\" \"Then get thee gone, and a murrain seize thee!\" cried the Sheriff, and his voice trembled with anger. \"And by my faith and troth, I have a good part of a mind to have thee beaten for thine insolence!\" Then he turned upon his heel and strode away. Then all sat down to the woodland feast and talked among themselves of the merry jest that had been played upon the Sheriff, and of the adventures that had befallen each member of the band in his disguise. But when the feast was done, Robin Hood took Little John apart and said, \"Truly am I vexed in my blood, for I heard the Sheriff say today, 'Thou shootest better than that coward knave Robin Hood, that dared not show his face here this day.' I would fain let him know who it was who won the golden arrow from out his hand, and also that I am no coward such as he takes me to be.\" Then Little John said, \"Good master, take thou me and Will Stutely, and we will send yon fat Sheriff news of all this by a messenger such as he doth not expect.\" That day the Sheriff sat at meat in the great hall of his house at Nottingham Town. Long tables stood down the hall, at which sat men-atarms and household servants and good stout villains,[Bond-servants.] in all fourscore and more. There they talked of the day's shooting as they ate their meat and quaffed their ale. The Sheriff sat at the head of the table upon a raised seat under a canopy, and beside him sat his dame. \"By my troth,\" said he, \"I did reckon full roundly that that knave Robin Hood would be at the game today. I did not think that he was such a coward. But who could that saucy knave be who answered me to my beard so bravely? I wonder that I did not have him beaten; but there was something about him that spoke of other things than rags and tatters.\" \"_Now Heaven bless Thy Grace this day Say all in sweet Sherwood For thou didst give the prize away To merry Robin Hood_.\" \"Whence came this?\" cried the Sheriff in a mighty voice. \"Even through the window, Your Worship,\" quoth the man who had handed the shaft to him. Will Stutely Rescued by His Companions NOW WHEN THE SHERIFF found that neither law nor guile could overcome Robin Hood, he was much perplexed, and said to himself, \"Fool that I am! Had I not told our King of Robin Hood, I would not have gotten myself into such a coil; but now I must either take him captive or have wrath visited upon my head from his most gracious Majesty. I have tried law, and I have tried guile, and I have failed in both; so I will try what may be done with might.\" At this speech many of the band shook their heads, and said to themselves, \"Now the Sheriff will think that we are cowards, and folk will scoff throughout the countryside, saying that we fear to meet these men.\" But they said nothing aloud, swallowing their words and doing as Robin bade them. Then Will Stutely leaped high aloft and laughed loudly, clapping his hands for pure joy that he should have been chosen from among them all. \"Now thanks, good master,\" quoth he, \"and if I bring not news of those knaves to thee, call me no more thy sly Will Stutely.\" But Stutely shook his head silently, for he said to himself, \"Maybe there be those here who know my voice.\" Then the constable said again, \"Whither goest thou, holy friar, upon this hot summer's day?\" \"I go a pilgrim to Canterbury Town,\" answered Will Stutely, speaking gruffly, so that none might know his voice. \"Will Stutely hath been taken,\" cried they, when they had come to where he stood. \"And is it thou that hast brought such doleful news?\" said Robin to the lass. \"Now hark you all!\" cried Robin. \"Our dear companion Will Stutely hath been taken by that vile Sheriff's men, therefore doth it behoove us to take bow and brand in hand to bring him off again; for I wot that we ought to risk life and limb for him, as he hath risked life and limb for us. Is it not so, my merry men all?\" Then all cried, \"Ay!\" with a great voice. So the next day they all wended their way from Sherwood Forest, but by different paths, for it behooved them to be very crafty; so the band separated into parties of twos and threes, which were all to meet again in a tangled dell that lay near to Nottingham Town. Then, when they had all gathered together at the place of meeting, Robin spoke to them thus: \"Now we will lie here in ambush until we can get news, for it doth behoove us to be cunning and wary if we would bring our friend Will Stutely off from the Sheriff's clutches.\" So they lay hidden a long time, until the sun stood high in the sky. The day was warm and the dusty road was bare of travelers, except an aged palmer who walked slowly along the highroad that led close beside the gray castle wall of Nottingham Town. When Robin saw that no other wayfarer was within sight, he called young David of Doncaster, who was a shrewd man for his years, and said to him, \"Now get thee forth, young David, and speak to yonder palmer that walks beside the town wall, for he hath come but now from Nottingham Town, and may tell thee news of good Stutely, perchance.\" So David strode forth, and when he came up to the pilgrim, he saluted him and said, \"Good morrow, holy father, and canst thou tell me when Will Stutely will be hanged upon the gallows tree? I fain would not miss the sight, for I have come from afar to see so sturdy a rogue hanged.\" \"Ay, marry, that is true,\" cried the young man. \"If Robin and his men be nigh this place, I wot right well they will strive to bring him forth from his peril. But fare thee well, thou good old man, and believe me, if Will Stutely die, he shall be right well avenged.\" Then he turned and strode rapidly away; but the Palmer looked after him, muttering, \"I wot that youth is no country hind that hath come to see a good man die. Well, well, perchance Robin Hood is not so far away but that there will be stout doings this day.\" So he went upon his way, muttering to himself. When David of Doncaster told Robin Hood what the Palmer had said to him, Robin called the band around him and spoke to them thus: The sun was low in the western sky when a bugle note sounded from the castle wall. Then all was bustle in Nottingham Town and crowds filled the streets, for all knew that the famous Will Stutely was to be hanged that day. Presently the castle gates opened wide and a great array of men-at-arms came forth with noise and clatter, the Sheriff, all clad in shining mail of linked chain, riding at their head. In the midst of all the guard, in a cart, with a halter about his neck, rode Will Stutely. His face was pale with his wound and with loss of blood, like the moon in broad daylight, and his fair hair was clotted in points upon his forehead, where the blood had hardened. When he came forth from the castle he looked up and he looked down, but though he saw some faces that showed pity and some that showed friendliness, he saw none that he knew. Then his heart sank within him like a plummet of lead, but nevertheless he spoke up boldly. \"Give a sword into my hand, Sir Sheriff,\" said he, \"and wounded man though I be, I will fight thee and all thy men till life and strength be gone.\" \"Then do but untie my hands and I will fight thee and thy men with no weapon but only my naked fists. I crave no weapon, but let me not be meanly hanged this day.\" \"Now stand thou back thine own self,\" quoth Little John, and straightway smote the man a buffet beside his head that felled him as a butcher fells an ox, and then he leaped to the cart where Stutely sat. \"Now as I live,\" cried the Sheriff, \"yon varlet I know right well is a sturdy rebel! Take him, I bid you all, and let him not go!\" So saying, he spurred his horse upon Little John, and rising in his stirrups smote with might and main, but Little John ducked quickly underneath the horse's belly and the blow whistled harmlessly over his head. \"Nay, good Sir Sheriff,\" cried he, leaping up again when the blow had passed, \"I must e'en borrow thy most worshipful sword.\" Thereupon he twitched the weapon deftly from out the Sheriff's hand, \"Here, Stutely,\" he cried, \"the Sheriff hath lent thee his sword! Back to back with me, man, and defend thyself, for help is nigh!\" \"Stand back, Sheriff!\" cried Little John; and even as he spoke, a bugle horn sounded shrilly and a clothyard shaft whistled within an inch of the Sheriff's head. Then came a swaying hither and thither, and oaths, cries, and groans, and clashing of steel, and swords flashed in the setting sun, and a score of arrows whistled through the air. And some cried, \"Help, help!\" and some, \"A rescue, a rescue!\" \"Treason!\" cried the Sheriff in a loud voice. \"Bear back! Bear back! Else we be all dead men!\" Thereupon he reined his horse backward through the thickest of the crowd. \"Oh stay!\" shouted Will Stutely after the Sheriff. \"Thou wilt never catch bold Robin Hood if thou dost not stand to meet him face to face.\" But the Sheriff, bowing along his horse's back, made no answer but only spurred the faster. Then Will Stutely turned to Little John and looked him in the face till the tears ran down from his eyes and he wept aloud; and kissing his friend's cheeks, \"O Little John!\" quoth he, \"mine own true friend, and he that I love better than man or woman in all the world beside! Little did I reckon to see thy face this day, or to meet thee this side Paradise.\" Little John could make no answer, but wept also. Robin Hood Turns Butcher But in the meantime Robin Hood and his band lived quietly in Sherwood Forest, without showing their faces abroad, for Robin knew that it would not be wise for him to be seen in the neighborhood of Nottingham, those in authority being very wroth with him. But though they did not go abroad, they lived a merry life within the woodlands, spending the days in shooting at garlands hung upon a willow wand at the end of the glade, the leafy aisles ringing with merry jests and laughter: for whoever missed the garland was given a sound buffet, which, if delivered by Little John, never failed to topple over the unfortunate yeoman. Then they had bouts of wrestling and of cudgel play, so that every day they gained in skill and strength. \"Good morrow to thee, jolly fellow,\" quoth Robin, \"thou seemest happy this merry morn.\" \"Ay, that am I,\" quoth the jolly Butcher, \"and why should I not be so? Am I not hale in wind and limb? Have I not the bonniest lass in all Nottinghamshire? And lastly, am I not to be married to her on Thursday next in sweet Locksley Town?\" \"Ha,\" said Robin, \"comest thou from Locksley Town? Well do I know that fair place for miles about, and well do I know each hedgerow and gentle pebbly stream, and even all the bright little fishes therein, for there I was born and bred. Now, where goest thou with thy meat, my fair friend?\" \"I go to the market at Nottingham Town to sell my beef and my mutton,\" answered the Butcher. \"But who art thou that comest from Locksley Town?\" \"A yeoman am I, and men do call me Robin Hood.\" \"Now, by Our Lady's grace,\" cried the Butcher, \"well do I know thy name, and many a time have I heard thy deeds both sung and spoken of. But Heaven forbid that thou shouldst take aught of me! An honest man am I, and have wronged neither man nor maid; so trouble me not, good master, as I have never troubled thee.\" \"Now may the blessings of all the saints fall on thine honest head!\" cried the Butcher right joyfully, as he leaped down from his cart and took the purse that Robin held out to him. \"Nay,\" quoth Robin, laughing loudly, \"many do like me and wish me well, but few call me honest. Now get thee gone back to thy lass, and give her a sweet kiss from me.\" So saying, he donned the Butcher's apron, and, climbing into the cart, he took the reins in his hand and drove off through the forest to Nottingham Town. When he came to Nottingham, he entered that part of the market where butchers stood, and took up his inn[Stand for selling] in the best place he could find. Next, he opened his stall and spread his meat upon the bench, then, taking his cleaver and steel and clattering them together, he trolled aloud in merry tones: \"Lamb have I that hath fed upon nought But the dainty dames pied, And the violet sweet, and the daffodil That grow fair streams beside. \"And beef have I from the heathery words, And mutton from dales all green, And veal as white as a maiden's brow, With its mother's milk, I ween. \"Now, beshrew his heart,\" quoth jolly Robin, \"that would deny a butcher. And, moreover, I will go dine with you all, my sweet lads, and that as fast as I can hie.\" Whereupon, having sold all his meat, he closed his stall and went with them to the great Guild Hall. Then the Sheriff called Robin to him, not knowing him in his butcher's dress, and made him sit close to him on his right hand; for he loved a rich young prodigal--especially when he thought that he might lighten that prodigal's pockets into his own most worshipful purse. So he made much of Robin, and laughed and talked with him more than with any of the others. At last the dinner was ready to be served and the Sheriff bade Robin say grace, so Robin stood up and said, \"Now Heaven bless us all and eke good meat and good sack within this house, and may all butchers be and remain as honest men as I am.\" At this all laughed, the Sheriff loudest of all, for he said to himself, \"Surely this is indeed some prodigal, and perchance I may empty his purse of some of the money that the fool throweth about so freely.\" Then he spake aloud to Robin, saying, \"Thou art a jolly young blade, and I love thee mightily\"; and he smote Robin upon the shoulder. Then Robin laughed loudly too. \"Yea,\" quoth he, \"I know thou dost love a jolly blade, for didst thou not have jolly Robin Hood at thy shooting match and didst thou not gladly give him a bright golden arrow for his own?\" At this the Sheriff looked grave and all the guild of butchers too, so that none laughed but Robin, only some winked slyly at each other. \"Come, fill us some sack!\" cried Robin. \"Let us e'er be merry while we may, for man is but dust, and he hath but a span to live here till the worm getteth him, as our good gossip Swanthold sayeth; so let life be merry while it lasts, say I. Nay, never look down i' the mouth, Sir Sheriff. Who knowest but that thou mayest catch Robin Hood yet, if thou drinkest less good sack and Malmsey, and bringest down the fat about thy paunch and the dust from out thy brain. Be merry, man.\" \"Now thou art a right merry soul,\" quoth the Sheriff, \"and I wot thou must have many a head of horned beasts and many an acre of land, that thou dost spend thy money so freely.\" \"I will bring the money,\" said the Sheriff. \"But what is thy name, good youth?\" \"Men call me Robert o' Locksley,\" quoth bold Robin. Then Robin Hood laughed again. \"So be it,\" he said, smiting his palm upon the Sheriff's hand. \"Truly my brothers will be thankful to thee for thy money.\" Thus the bargain was closed, but many of the butchers talked among themselves of the Sheriff, saying that it was but a scurvy trick to beguile a poor spendthrift youth in this way. So they journeyed onward till they came within the verge of Sherwood Forest, when presently the Sheriff looked up and down and to the right and to the left of him, and then grew quiet and ceased his laughter. \"Now,\" quoth he, \"may Heaven and its saints preserve us this day from a rogue men call Robin Hood.\" Then Robin laughed aloud. \"Nay,\" said he, \"thou mayst set thy mind at rest, for well do I know Robin Hood and well do I know that thou art in no more danger from him this day than thou art from me.\" At this the Sheriff looked askance at Robin, saying to himself, \"I like not that thou seemest so well acquainted with this bold outlaw, and I wish that I were well out of Sherwood Forest.\" But still they traveled deeper into the forest shades, and the deeper they went, the more quiet grew the Sheriff. At last they came to where the road took a sudden bend, and before them a herd of dun deer went tripping across the path. Then Robin Hood came close to the Sheriff and pointing his finger, he said, \"These are my horned beasts, good Master Sheriff. How dost thou like them? Are they not fat and fair to see?\" At this the Sheriff drew rein quickly. \"Now fellow,\" quoth he, \"I would I were well out of this forest, for I like not thy company. Go thou thine own path, good friend, and let me but go mine.\" \"What wouldst thou have, good master?\" quoth Little John. \"Why,\" answered Robin, \"dost thou not see that I have brought goodly company to feast with us today? Fye, for shame! Do you not see our good and worshipful master, the Sheriff of Nottingham? Take thou his bridle, Little John, for he has honored us today by coming to feast with us.\" Then all doffed their hats humbly, without smiling or seeming to be in jest, while Little John took the bridle rein and led the palfrey still deeper into the forest, all marching in order, with Robin Hood walking beside the Sheriff, hat in hand. So at last they came to that part of Sherwood Forest where a noble oak spread its branches wide, and beneath it was a seat all made of moss, on which Robin sat down, placing the Sheriff at his right hand. \"Now busk ye, my merry men all,\" quoth he, \"and bring forth the best we have, both of meat and wine, for his worship the Sheriff hath feasted me in Nottingham Guild Hall today, and I would not have him go back empty.\" All this time nothing had been said of the Sheriff's money, so presently he began to pluck up heart. \"For,\" said he to himself, \"maybe Robin Hood hath forgotten all about it.\" Then the Sheriff arose and said, \"I thank you all, good yeomen, for the merry entertainment ye have given me this day. Right courteously have ye used me, showing therein that ye have much respect for our glorious King and his deputy in brave Nottinghamshire. But the shadows grow long, and I must away before darkness comes, lest I lose myself within the forest.\" \"Nay, I forgot nought,\" said the Sheriff; yet all the same his heart sank within him. \"But I say thou hast forgot something,\" quoth Robin. \"We keep a merry inn here in the greenwood, but whoever becometh our guest must pay his reckoning.\" Then the Sheriff laughed, but the laugh was hollow. \"Well, jolly boys,\" quoth he, \"we have had a merry time together today, and even if ye had not asked me, I would have given you a score of pounds for the sweet entertainment I have had.\" Then \"Ay!\" cried all, in a loud voice. As he spoke the Sheriff's ruddy cheeks grew pale, and he said nothing more but looked upon the ground and gnawed his nether lip. Then slowly he drew forth his fat purse and threw it upon the cloth in front of him. \"Now take the purse, Little John,\" quoth Robin Hood, \"and see that the reckoning be right. We would not doubt our Sheriff, but he might not like it if he should find he had not paid his full score.\" \"Nay, Heaven forbid!\" cried the Sheriff hastily. \"I can find mine own way, good man, without aid.\" Little John Goes to Nottingham Fair SPRING HAD GONE since the Sheriff's feast in Sherwood, and summer also, and the mellow month of October had come. All the air was cool and fresh; the harvests were gathered home, the young birds were full fledged, the hops were plucked, and apples were ripe. But though time had so smoothed things over that men no longer talked of the horned beasts that the Sheriff wished to buy, he was still sore about the matter and could not bear to hear Robin Hood's name spoken in his presence. When Robin Hood heard what had been proclaimed he was vexed, and said, \"Now beshrew this Sheriff that he should offer such a prize that none but shepherd hinds will care to shoot for it! I would have loved nothing better than to have had another bout at merry Nottingham Town, but if I should win this prize nought would it pleasure or profit me.\" Then up spoke Little John: \"Nay, but hearken, good master,\" said he, \"only today Will Stutely, young David of Doncaster, and I were at the Sign of the Blue Boar, and there we heard all the news of this merry Fair, and also that the Sheriff hath offered this prize, that we of Sherwood might not care to come to the Fair; so, good master, if thou wilt, I would fain go and strive to win even this poor thing among the stout yeomen who will shoot at Nottingham Town.\" \"Nay, Little John,\" quoth Robin, \"thou art a sound stout fellow, yet thou lackest the cunning that good Stutely hath, and I would not have harm befall thee for all Nottinghamshire. Nevertheless, if thou wilt go, take some disguise lest there be those there who may know thee.\" \"It is much against my will,\" said Robin Hood, \"ne'ertheless, if thou dost wish it, get thee gone, but bear thyself seemingly, Little John, for thou art mine own right-hand man and I could ill bear to have harm befall thee.\" So Little John clad himself all in scarlet and started off to the Fair at Nottingham Town. So Little John came to the Fair. All scarlet were his hose and jerkin, and scarlet was his cowled cap, with a scarlet feather stuck in the side of it. Over his shoulders was slung a stout bow of yew, and across his back hung a quiver of good round arrows. Many turned to look after such a stout, tall fellow, for his shoulders were broader by a palm's-breadth than any that were there, and he stood a head taller than all the other men. The lasses, also, looked at him askance, thinking they had never seen a lustier youth. Then he strolled to the platform where they were at cudgel play, for he loved a bout at quarterstaff as he loved meat and drink; and here befell an adventure that was sung in ballads throughout the mid-country for many a day. Presently Eric saw where Little John stood among the others, a head and shoulders above them all, and he called to him loudly, \"Halloa, thou long-legged fellow in scarlet! Broad are thy shoulders and thick thy head; is not thy lass fair enough for thee to take cudgel in hand for her sake? In truth, I believe that Nottingham men do turn to bone and sinew, for neither heart nor courage have they! Now, thou great lout, wilt thou not twirl staff for Nottingham?\" Then the people shouted so loud that folk came running from all about to see what was the ado; while Little John leaped down from the stand and gave the staff back to him that had lent it to him. And thus ended the famous bout between Little John and Eric o' Lincoln of great renown. Then the Sheriff stepped down from the raised seat and came to where the archers stood, while all doffed their caps that saw him coming. He looked keenly at Little John but did not know him, though he said, after a while, \"How now, good fellow, methinks there is that about thy face that I have seen erewhile.\" \"Mayhap it may be so,\" quoth Little John, \"for often have I seen Your Worship.\" And, as he spoke, he looked steadily into the Sheriff's eyes so that the latter did not suspect who he was. \"A brave blade art thou, good friend,\" said the Sheriff, \"and I hear that thou hast well upheld the skill of Nottinghamshire against that of Lincoln this day. What may be thy name, good fellow?\" \"Men do call me Reynold Greenleaf, Your Worship,\" said Little John; and the old ballad that tells of this, adds, \"So, in truth, was he a green leaf, but of what manner of tree the Sheriff wotted not.\" \"Then here stand I a free man, and right gladly will I enter thy household,\" said Little John, for he thought he might find some merry jest, should he enter the Sheriff's service. \"Then,\" said Little John, \"for joy of having gotten myself into thy service, I will give fat steers and brown ale to all these good folk, to make them merry withal.\" At this arose a great shout, many casting their caps aloft, for joy of the gift. Then some built great fires and roasted the steers, and others broached the butt of ale, with which all made themselves merry. Then, when they had eaten and drunk as much as they could, and when the day faded and the great moon arose, all red and round, over the spires and towers of Nottingham Town, they joined hands and danced around the fires, to the music of bagpipes and harps. But long before this merrymaking had begun, the Sheriff and his new servant Reynold Greenleaf were in the Castle of Nottingham. How Little John Lived at the Sheriff's When he came downstairs he saw the Steward standing near the pantry door--a great, fat man, with a huge bundle of keys hanging to his girdle. Then Little John said, \"Ho, Master Steward, a hungry man am I, for nought have I had for all this blessed morn. Therefore, give me to eat.\" Then the Steward looked grimly at him and rattled the keys in his girdle, for he hated Little John because he had found favor with the Sheriff. \"So, Master Reynold Greenleaf, thou art anhungered, art thou?\" quoth he. \"But, fair youth, if thou livest long enough, thou wilt find that he who getteth overmuch sleep for an idle head goeth with an empty stomach. For what sayeth the old saw, Master Greenleaf? Is it not 'The late fowl findeth but ill faring'?\" \"Now, thou great purse of fat!\" cried Little John, \"I ask thee not for fool's wisdom, but for bread and meat. Who art thou, that thou shouldst deny me to eat? By Saint Dunstan, thou hadst best tell me where my breakfast is, if thou wouldst save broken bones!\" \"Thy breakfast, Master Fireblaze, is in the pantry,\" answered the Steward. \"Then fetch it hither!\" cried Little John, who waxed angry by this time. \"Go thou and fetch it thine own self,\" quoth the Steward. \"Am I thy slave, to fetch and carry for thee?\" \"I say, go thou, bring it me!\" \"I say, go thou, fetch it for thyself!\" When the Steward saw what was done, he waxed mad with rage; and, as Little John stooped to look within the pantry, he seized him from behind by the nape of the neck, pinching him sorely and smiting him over the head with his keys till the yeoman's ears rang again. At this Little John turned upon the Steward and smote him such a buffet that the fat man fell to the floor and lay there as though he would never move again. \"There,\" quoth Little John, \"think well of that stroke and never keep a good breakfast from a hungry man again.\" Then the Cook walked straightway to the broken pantry door, through which he saw Little John tucking a napkin beneath his chin and preparing to make himself merry. \"Why, how now, Reynold Greenleaf?\" said the Cook, \"thou art no better than a thief, I wot. Come thou straight forth, man, or I will carve thee as I would carve a sucking pig.\" \"Lion or no lion,\" quoth the valorous Cook, \"come thou straight forth, else thou art a coward heart as well as a knavish thief.\" \"Ha!\" cried Little John, \"coward's name have I never had; so, look to thyself, good Cook, for I come forth straight, the roaring lion I did speak of but now.\" At last, after a long time had passed, the Cook drew a full, deep breath, as though of much regret, and wiped his hands upon the napkin, for he could eat no more. Little John, also, had enough, for he pushed the pasty aside, as though he would say, \"I want thee by me no more, good friend.\" Then he took the pottle of sack, and said he, \"Now, good fellow, I swear by all that is bright, that thou art the stoutest companion at eating that ever I had. Lo! I drink thy health.\" So saying, he clapped the flask to his lips and cast his eyes aloft, while the good wine flooded his throat. Then he passed the pottle to the Cook, who also said, \"Lo, I drink thy health, sweet fellow!\" Nor was he behind Little John in drinking any more than in eating. \"Now,\" quoth Little John, \"thy voice is right round and sweet, jolly lad. I doubt not thou canst sing a ballad most blithely; canst thou not?\" \"So be it, pretty boy,\" quoth the Cook. \"And hast thou e'er heard the song of the Deserted Shepherdess?\" \"Truly, I know not,\" answered Little John, \"but sing thou and let me hear.\" Then the Cook took another draught from the pottle, and, clearing his throat, sang right sweetly: THE SONG OF THE DESERTED SHEPHERDESS \"_In Lententime, when leaves wax green, And pretty birds begin to mate, When lark cloth sing, and thrush, I ween, And stockdove cooeth soon and late, Fair Phillis sat beside a stone, And thus I heard her make her moan: 'O willow, willow, willow, willow! I'll take me of thy branches fair And twine a wreath to deck my hair. \"'The thrush hath taken him a she, The robin, too, and eke the dove; My Robin hath deserted me, And left me for another love. So here, by brookside, all alone, I sit me down and make my moan. O willow, willow, willow, willow! I'll take me of thy branches fair And twine a wreath to deck my hair.' \"But ne'er came herring from the sea, But good as he were in the tide; Young Corydon came o'er the lea, And sat him Phillis down beside. So, presently, she changed her tone, And 'gan to cease her from her moan, 'O willow, willow, willow, willow! Thou mayst e'en keep thy garlands fair, I want them not to deck my hair_.'\" \"Now, by my faith,\" cried Little John, \"that same is a right good song, and hath truth in it, also.\" THE GOOD KNIGHT AND HIS LOVE \"_When Arthur, King, did rule this land, A goodly king was he, And had he of stout knights a band Of merry company. \"Among them all, both great and small, A good stout knight was there, A lusty childe, and eke a tall, That loved a lady fair. \"But nought would she to do with he, But turned her face away; So gat he gone to far countrye, And left that lady gay. \"There all alone he made his moan, And eke did sob and sigh, And weep till it would move a stone, And he was like to die. \"But still his heart did feel the smart, And eke the dire distress, And rather grew his pain more sharp As grew his body less. \"Then gat he back where was good sack And merry com panye, And soon did cease to cry 'Alack!' When blithe and gay was he. \"From which I hold, and feel full bold To say, and eke believe, That gin the belly go not cold The heart will cease to grieve_.\" \"Now, by my faith,\" cried the Cook, as he rattled the pottle against the sideboard, \"I like that same song hugely, and eke the motive of it, which lieth like a sweet kernel in a hazelnut\" \"Now thou art a man of shrewd opinions,\" quoth Little John, \"and I love thee truly as thou wert my brother.\" \"And I love thee, too. But the day draweth on, and I have my cooking to do ere our master cometh home; so let us e'en go and settle this brave fight we have in hand.\" \"Ay, marry,\" quoth Little John, \"and that right speedily. Never have I been more laggard in fighting than in eating and drinking. So come thou straight forth into the passageway, where there is good room to swing a sword, and I will try to serve thee.\" \"Now will I make my vow,\" quoth Little John, \"thou art the very best swordsman that ever mine eyes beheld. Truly, I had thought to carve thee ere now.\" \"And I had thought to do the same by thee,\" quoth the Cook, \"but I have missed the mark somehow.\" \"Now I have been thinking within myself,\" quoth Little John, \"what we are fighting for; but albeit I do not rightly know.\" \"Now, thou art a man after mine own heart!\" cried the Cook right heartily, \"and, as thou speakest of it, that is the very service for me. I will go with thee, and that right gladly. Give me thy palm, sweet fellow, and I will be thine own companion from henceforth. What may be thy name, lad?\" \"Men do call me Little John, good fellow.\" \"How? And art thou indeed Little John, and Robin Hood's own right-hand man? Many a time and oft I heard of thee, but never did I hope to set eyes upon thee. And thou art indeed the famous Little John!\" And the Cook seemed lost in amazement, and looked upon his companion with open eyes. \"I am Little John, indeed, and I will bring to Robin Hood this day a right stout fellow to join his merry band. But ere we go, good friend, it seemeth to me to be a vast pity that, as we have had so much of the Sheriff's food, we should not also carry off some of his silver plate to Robin Hood, as a present from his worship.\" \"Ay, marry is it,\" said the Cook. And so they began hunting about, and took as much silver as they could lay hands upon, clapping it into a bag, and when they had filled the sack they set forth to Sherwood Forest. Plunging into the woods, they came at last to the greenwood tree, where they found Robin Hood and threescore of his merry men lying upon the fresh green grass. When Robin and his men saw who it was that came, they leaped to their feet. \"Now welcome!\" cried Robin Hood. \"Now welcome, Little John! For long hath it been since we have heard from thee, though we all knew that thou hadst joined the Sheriff's service. And how hast thou fared all these long days?\" \"Right merrily have I lived at the Lord Sheriff's,\" answered Little John, \"and I have come straight thence. See, good master! I have brought thee his cook, and even his silver plate.\" Thereupon he told Robin Hood and his merry men that were there, all that had befallen him since he had left them to go to the Fair at Nottingham Town. Then all shouted with laughter, except Robin Hood; but he looked grave. Though Little John was vexed with this, he strove to pass it off with a jest. \"Nay, good master,\" quoth he, \"if thou thinkest the Sheriff gave us not the plate, I will fetch him, that he may tell us with his own lips he giveth it all to us.\" So saying he leaped to his feet, and was gone before Robin could call him back. \"Why, Reynold Greenleaf!\" cried the Sheriff, \"whence comest thou and where hast thou been?\" \"I have been in the forest,\" answered Little John, speaking amazedly, \"and there I saw a sight such as ne'er before man's eyes beheld! Yonder I saw a young hart all in green from top to toe, and about him was a herd of threescore deer, and they, too, were all of green from head to foot. Yet I dared not shoot, good master, for fear lest they should slay me.\" \"Why, how now, Reynold Greenleaf,\" cried the Sheriff, \"art thou dreaming or art thou mad, that thou dost bring me such, a tale?\" \"Nay, I am not dreaming nor am I mad,\" said Little John, \"and if thou wilt come with me, I will show thee this fair sight, for I have seen it with mine own eyes. But thou must come alone, good master, lest the others frighten them and they get away.\" So the party all rode forward, and Little John led them downward into the forest. \"Now, good master,\" quoth he at last, \"we are nigh where I saw this herd.\" Then the Sheriff descended from his horse and bade them wait for him until he should return; and Little John led him forward through a close copse until suddenly they came to a great open glade, at the end of which Robin Hood sat beneath the shade of the great oak tree, with his merry men all about him. \"See, good Master Sheriff,\" quoth Little John, \"yonder is the hart of which I spake to thee.\" At this the Sheriff turned to Little John and said bitterly, \"Long ago I thought I remembered thy face, but now I know thee. Woe betide thee, Little John, for thou hast betrayed me this day.\" In the meantime Robin Hood had come to them. \"Now welcome, Master Sheriff,\" said he. \"Hast thou come today to take another feast with me?\" \"Nay, Heaven forbid!\" said the Sheriff in tones of deep earnest. \"I care for no feast and have no hunger today.\" \"Nevertheless,\" quoth Robin, \"if thou hast no hunger, maybe thou hast thirst, and well I know thou wilt take a cup of sack with me. But I am grieved that thou wilt not feast with me, for thou couldst have victuals to thy liking, for there stands thy Cook.\" Then he led the Sheriff, willy-nilly, to the seat he knew so well beneath the greenwood tree. \"Ho, lads!\" cried Robin, \"fill our good friend the Sheriff a right brimming cup of sack and fetch it hither, for he is faint and weary.\" \"How now,\" quoth Robin, \"dost thou not like our new silver service? We have gotten a bag of it this day.\" So saying, he held up the sack of silver that Little John and the Cook had brought with them. Then, slinging the bag upon his shoulder, he turned away, the Sheriff following him, all too perplexed in mind to speak. So they went forward until they came to within a furlong of the spot where the Sheriff's companions were waiting for him. Then Robin Hood gave the sack of silver back to the Sheriff. \"Take thou thine own again,\" he said, \"and hearken to me, good Sheriff, take thou a piece of advice with it. Try thy servants well ere thou dost engage them again so readily.\" Then, turning, he left the other standing bewildered, with the sack in his hands. Little John and the Tanner of Blyth All the air was laden with the bitter fragrance of the May, and all the bosky shades of the woodlands beyond rang with the sweet song of birds-the throstle cock, the cuckoo, and the wood pigeon--and with the song of birds mingled the cool sound of the gurgling brook that leaped out of the forest shades, and ran fretting amid its rough, gray stones across the sunlit open glade before the trysting tree. And a fair sight was that halfscore of tall, stout yeomen, all clad in Lincoln green, lying beneath the broad-spreading branches of the great oak tree, amid the quivering leaves of which the sunlight shivered and fell in dancing patches upon the grass. Suddenly Robin Hood smote his knee. Now it was an ill piece of luck for Little John that he left his duty for his pleasure, and he paid a great score for it, as we are all apt to do in the same case, as you shall see. Now Arthur had been to Nottingham Town the day before Little John set forth on his errand, there to sell a halfscore of tanned cowhides. At the dawn of the same day that Little John left the inn, he started from Nottingham, homeward for Blyth. His way led, all in the dewy morn, past the verge of Sherwood Forest, where the birds were welcoming the lovely day with a great and merry jubilee. Across the Tanner's shoulders was slung his stout quarterstaff, ever near enough to him to be gripped quickly, and on his head was a cap of doubled cowhide, so tough that it could hardly be cloven even by a broadsword. Now as Little John stepped blithely along, thinking of nothing but of such things as the sweetness of the hawthorn buds that bedecked the hedgerows, or gazing upward at the lark, that, springing from the dewy grass, hung aloft on quivering wings in the yellow sunlight, pouring forth its song that fell like a falling star from the sky, his luck led him away from the highway, not far from the spot where Arthur a Bland was peeping this way and that through the leaves of the thickets. Hearing a rustling of the branches, Little John stopped and presently caught sight of the brown cowhide cap of the Tanner moving among the bushes. \"I do much wonder,\" quoth Little John to himself, \"what yon knave is after, that he should go thus peeping and peering about I verily believe that yon scurvy varlet is no better than a thief, and cometh here after our own and the good King's dun deer.\" For by much roving in the forest, Little John had come to look upon all the deer in Sherwood as belonging to Robin Hood and his band as much as to good King Harry. \"Nay,\" quoth he again, after a time, \"this matter must e'en be looked into.\" So, quitting the highroad, he also entered the thickets, and began spying around after stout Arthur a Bland. So for a long time they both of them went hunting about, Little John after the Tanner, and the Tanner after the deer. At last Little John trod upon a stick, which snapped under his foot, whereupon, hearing the noise, the Tanner turned quickly and caught sight of the yeoman. Seeing that the Tanner had spied him out, Little John put a bold face upon the matter. \"Hilloa,\" quoth he, \"what art thou doing here, thou naughty fellow? Who art thou that comest ranging Sherwood's paths? In very sooth thou hast an evil cast of countenance, and I do think, truly, that thou art no better than a thief, and comest after our good King's deer.\" \"I care not who thou art,\" answered the bold Tanner, \"and unless thou hast many more of thy kind by thee, thou canst never make Arthur a Bland cry 'A mercy.'\" \"Is it so?\" cried Little John in a rage. \"Now, by my faith, thou saucy rogue, thy tongue hath led thee into a pit thou wilt have a sorry time getting out of; for I will give thee such a drubbing as ne'er hast thou had in all thy life before. Take thy staff in thy hand, fellow, for I will not smite an unarmed man. \"Marry come up with a murrain!\" cried the Tanner, for he, too, had talked himself into a fume. \"Big words ne'er killed so much as a mouse. Who art thou that talkest so freely of cracking the head of Arthur a Bland? If I do not tan thy hide this day as ne'er I tanned a calf's hide in all my life before, split my staff into skewers for lamb's flesh and call me no more brave man! Now look to thyself, fellow!\" \"Nay, I pass not for length,\" answered the Tanner. \"My staff is long enough to knock down a calf; so look to thyself, fellow, I say again.\" So, without more ado, each gripped his staff in the middle, and, with fell and angry looks, they came slowly together. All this time Robin Hood lay beneath the bush, rejoicing at such a comely bout of quarterstaff. \"By my faith!\" quoth he to himself, \"never had I thought to see Little John so evenly matched in all my life. Belike, though, he would have overcome yon fellow before this had he been in his former trim.\" \"Hold!\" roared Little John. \"Wouldst thou strike a man when he is down?\" \"Ay, marry would I,\" quoth the Tanner, giving him another thwack with his staff. \"Stop!\" roared Little John. \"Help! Hold, I say! I yield me! I yield me, I say, good fellow!\" \"Hast thou had enough?\" asked the Tanner grimly, holding his staff aloft. \"Ay, marry, and more than enough.\" \"Then thou mayst go thy ways; and thank thy patron saint that I am a merciful man,\" said the Tanner. \"Men do call me Arthur a Bland,\" spoke up the Tanner boldly, \"and now what may be thy name?\" \"Ha, Arthur a Bland!\" quoth Robin, \"I have heard thy name before, good fellow. Thou didst break the crown of a friend of mine at the fair at Ely last October. The folk there call him Jock o' Nottingham; we call him Will Scathelock. This poor fellow whom thou hast so belabored is counted the best hand at the quarterstaff in all merry England. His name is Little John, and mine Robin Hood.\" \"How!\" cried the Tanner, \"art thou indeed the great Robin Hood, and is this the famous Little John? Marry, had I known who thou art, I would never have been so bold as to lift my hand against thee. Let me help thee to thy feet, good Master Little John, and let me brush the dust from off thy coat.\" \"Nay,\" quoth Little John testily, at the same time rising carefully, as though his bones had been made of glass, \"I can help myself, good fellow, without thy aid; and let me tell thee, had it not been for that vile cowskin cap of thine, it would have been ill for thee this day.\" \"Will I join thy band?\" cried the Tanner joyfully. \"Ay, marry, will I! Hey for a merry life!\" cried he, leaping aloft and snapping his fingers, \"and hey for the life I love! Away with tanbark and filthy vats and foul cowhides! I will follow thee to the ends of the earth, good master, and not a herd of dun deer in all the forest but shall know the sound of the twang of my bowstring.\" Robin Hood and Will Scarlet Quoth Robin Hood to Little John, \"Why didst thou not go straight to Ancaster, yesterday, as I told thee? Thou hadst not gotten thyself into such a coil hadst thou done as I ordered.\" \"I feared the rain that threatened,\" said Little John in a sullen tone, for he was vexed at being so chaffed by Robin with what had happened to him. \"Nevertheless,\" growled Little John, \"the holy Saint Swithin holdeth the waters of the heavens in his pewter pot, and he could have poured them out, had he chosen, even from a clear sky; and wouldst thou have had me wet to the skin?\" After they had traveled some distance, the day being warm and the road dusty, Robin Hood waxed thirsty; so, there being a fountain of water as cold as ice, just behind the hedgerow, they crossed the stile and came to where the water bubbled up from beneath a mossy stone. Here, kneeling and making cups of the palms of their hands, they drank their fill, and then, the spot being cool and shady, they stretched their limbs and rested them for a space. \"Heyday!\" quoth he, \"yon is a gaily feathered bird, I take my vow.\" \"By my life!\" quoth Robin Hood, laughing, \"saw ye e'er such a pretty, mincing fellow?\" \"Truly, his clothes have overmuch prettiness for my taste,\" quoth Arthur a Bland, \"but, ne'ertheless, his shoulders are broad and his loins are narrow, and seest thou, good master, how that his arms hang from his body? They dangle not down like spindles, but hang stiff and bend at the elbow. I take my vow, there be no bread and milk limbs in those fine clothes, but stiff joints and tough thews.\" \"Pah!\" quoth Robin Hood, \"the sight of such a fellow doth put a nasty taste into my mouth! Look how he doth hold that fair flower betwixt his thumb and finger, as he would say, 'Good rose, I like thee not so ill but I can bear thy odor for a little while.' I take it ye are both wrong, and verily believe that were a furious mouse to run across his path, he would cry, 'La!' or 'Alack-a-day!' and fall straightway into a swoon. I wonder who he may be.\" \"Some great baron's son, I doubt not,\" answered Little John, \"with good and true men's money lining his purse.\" \"Ay, marry, that is true, I make no doubt,\" quoth Robin. \"What a pity that such men as he, that have no thought but to go abroad in gay clothes, should have good fellows, whose shoes they are not fit to tie, dancing at their bidding. By Saint Dunstan, Saint Alfred, Saint Withold, and all the good men in the Saxon calendar, it doth make me mad to see such gay lordlings from over the sea go stepping on the necks of good Saxons who owned this land before ever their great-grandsires chewed rind of brawn! By the bright bow of Heaven, I will have their ill-gotten gains from them, even though I hang for it as high as e'er a forest tree in Sherwood!\" \"Why, how now, master,\" quoth Little John, \"what heat is this? Thou dost set thy pot a-boiling, and mayhap no bacon to cook! Methinks yon fellow's hair is overlight for Norman locks. He may be a good man and true for aught thou knowest.\" \"Nay,\" said Robin, \"my head against a leaden farthing, he is what I say. So, lie ye both here, I say, till I show you how I drub this fellow.\" So saying, Robin Hood stepped forth from the shade of the beech tree, crossed the stile, and stood in the middle of the road, with his hands on his hips, in the stranger's path. Meantime the stranger, who had been walking so slowly that all this talk was held before he came opposite the place where they were, neither quickened his pace nor seemed to see that such a man as Robin Hood was in the world. So Robin stood in the middle of the road, waiting while the other walked slowly forward, smelling his rose, and looking this way and that, and everywhere except at Robin. \"Hold!\" cried Robin, when at last the other had come close to him. \"Hold! Stand where thou art!\" \"Wherefore should I hold, good fellow?\" said the stranger in soft and gentle voice. \"And wherefore should I stand where I am? Ne'ertheless, as thou dost desire that I should stay, I will abide for a short time, that I may hear what thou mayst have to say to me.\" \"Then,\" quoth Robin, \"as thou dost so fairly do as I tell thee, and dost give me such soft speech, I will also treat thee with all due courtesy. I would have thee know, fair friend, that I am, as it were, a votary at the shrine of Saint Wilfred who, thou mayst know, took, willy-nilly, all their gold from the heathen, and melted it up into candlesticks. Wherefore, upon such as come hereabouts, I levy a certain toll, which I use for a better purpose, I hope, than to make candlesticks withal. Therefore, sweet chuck, I would have thee deliver to me thy purse, that I may look into it, and judge, to the best of my poor powers, whether thou hast more wealth about thee than our law allows. For, as our good Gaffer Swanthold sayeth, 'He who is fat from overliving must needs lose blood.'\" All this time the youth had been sniffing at the rose that he held betwixt his thumb and finger. \"Nay,\" said he with a gentle smile, when Robin Hood had done, \"I do love to hear thee talk, thou pretty fellow, and if, haply, thou art not yet done, finish, I beseech thee. I have yet some little time to stay.\" \"I have said all,\" quoth Robin, \"and now, if thou wilt give me thy purse, I will let thee go thy way without let or hindrance so soon as I shall see what it may hold. I will take none from thee if thou hast but little.\" \"Alas! It doth grieve me much,\" said the other, \"that I cannot do as thou dost wish. I have nothing to give thee. Let me go my way, I prythee. I have done thee no harm.\" \"Nay, thou goest not,\" quoth Robin, \"till thou hast shown me thy purse.\" \"Good friend,\" said the other gently, \"I have business elsewhere. I have given thee much time and have heard thee patiently. Prythee, let me depart in peace.\" \"Alas!\" said the stranger sadly, \"it doth grieve me that this thing must be. I fear much that I must slay thee, thou poor fellow!\" So saying, he drew his sword. \"Put by thy weapon,\" quoth Robin. \"I would take no vantage of thee. Thy sword cannot stand against an oaken staff such as mine. I could snap it like a barley straw. Yonder is a good oaken thicket by the roadside; take thee a cudgel thence and defend thyself fairly, if thou hast a taste for a sound drubbing.\" Little John and the Tanner had been watching all that passed, but when they saw the stranger drag the sapling up from the earth, and heard the rending and snapping of its roots, the Tanner pursed his lips together, drawing his breath between them in a long inward whistle. \"By the breath of my body!\" said Little John, as soon as he could gather his wits from their wonder, \"sawest thou that, Arthur? Marry, I think our poor master will stand but an ill chance with yon fellow. By Our Lady, he plucked up yon green tree as it were a barley straw.\" Whatever Robin Hood thought, he stood his ground, and now he and the stranger in scarlet stood face to face. \"Hold!\" cried Little John, bursting from his cover, with the Tanner at his heels. \"Hold! give over, I say!\" \"Stop!\" cried Robin Hood, \"we will fight no more. I take my vow, this is an ill day for thee and me, Little John. I do verily believe that my wrist, and eke my arm, are palsied by the jar of the blow that this stranger struck me.\" Then Little John turned to Robin Hood. \"Why, how now, good master,\" said he. \"Alas! Thou art in an ill plight. Marry, thy jerkin is all befouled with the dust of the road. Let me help thee to arise.\" \"A plague on thy aid!\" cried Robin angrily. \"I can get to my feet without thy help, good fellow.\" \"Nay, but let me at least dust thy coat for thee. I fear thy poor bones are mightily sore,\" quoth Little John soberly, but with a sly twinkle in his eyes. \"Give over, I say!\" quoth Robin in a fume. \"My coat hath been dusted enough already, without aid of thine.\" Then, turning to the stranger, he said, \"What may be thy name, good fellow?\" \"My name is Gamwell,\" answered the other. \"Ha!\" cried Robin, \"is it even so? I have near kin of that name. Whence camest thou, fair friend?\" \"Ha! Will Gamwell!\" cried Robin, placing both hands upon the other's shoulders and holding him off at arm's length. \"Surely, it can be none other! I might have known thee by that pretty maiden air of thine--that dainty, finicking manner of gait. Dost thou not know me, lad? Look upon me well.\" \"Now, by the breath of my body!\" cried the other, \"I do believe from my heart that thou art mine own Uncle Robin. Nay, certain it is so!\" And each flung his arms around the other, kissing him upon the cheek. \"Yea,\" said young Gamwell, \"and I did so look up to thee, and thought thee so above all other men that, I make my vow, had I known who thou wert, I would never have dared to lift hand against thee this day. I trust I did thee no great harm.\" \"No, no,\" quoth Robin hastily, and looking sideways at Little John, \"thou didst not harm me. But say no more of that, I prythee. Yet I will say, lad, that I hope I may never feel again such a blow as thou didst give me. By'r Lady, my arm doth tingle yet from fingernail to elbow. Truly, I thought that I was palsied for life. I tell thee, coz, that thou art the strongest man that ever I laid mine eyes upon. I take my vow, I felt my stomach quake when I beheld thee pluck up yon green tree as thou didst. But tell me, how camest thou to leave Sir Edward and thy mother?\" \"Will Scarlet,\" quoth Little John, stepping forward and reaching out his great palm, which the other took, \"Will Scarlet, the name fitteth thee well. Right glad am I to welcome thee among us. I am called Little John; and this is a new member who has just joined us, a stout tanner named Arthur a Bland. Thou art like to achieve fame, Will, let me tell thee, for there will be many a merry ballad sung about the country, and many a merry story told in Sherwood of how Robin Hood taught Little John and Arthur a Bland the proper way to use the quarterstaff; likewise, as it were, how our good master bit off so large a piece of cake that he choked on it.\" \"Nay, good Little John,\" quoth Robin gently, for he liked ill to have such a jest told of him. \"Why should we speak of this little matter? Prythee, let us keep this day's doings among ourselves.\" \"Nay, good Little John,\" said Robin hastily, \"I do bethink me I have said full enough on that score.\" \"Nay, then,\" said Robin Hood testily, \"I was mistaken. I remember me now it did seem to threaten rain.\" \"Truly, I did think so myself,\" quoth Little John, \"therefore, no doubt, thou dost think it was wise of me to abide all night at the Blue Boar Inn, instead of venturing forth in such stormy weather; dost thou not?\" \"A plague of thee and thy doings!\" cried Robin Hood. \"If thou wilt have it so, thou wert right to abide wherever thou didst choose.\" \"Come,\" cried Robin, biting his nether lip, while the others could not forbear laughing. \"We will go no farther today, but will return to Sherwood, and thou shalt go to Ancaster another time, Little John.\" So said Robin, for now that his bones were sore, he felt as though a long journey would be an ill thing for him. So, turning their backs, they retraced their steps whence they came. The Adventure with Midge the Miller's Son \"Since thou speakest of it,\" said Will Scarlet, \"methinks it would not be amiss myself. There is that within me crieth out, 'Victuals, good friend, victuals!'\" \"I know a house near by,\" said Arthur a Bland, \"and, had I but the money, I would bring ye that ye speak of; to wit, a sweet loaf of bread, a fair cheese, and a skin of brown ale.\" \"For the matter of that, thou knowest I have money by me, good master,\" quoth Little John. \"Why, so thou hast, Little John,\" said Robin. \"How much money will it take, good Arthur, to buy us meat and drink?\" So Little John gave Arthur the money, and the others stepped to the thicket, there to await the return of the Tanner. After this no man spake more, but each munched away at his bread and cheese lustily, with ever and anon a pull at the beer. At last Will Scarlet looked at a small piece of bread he still held in his hand, and quoth he, \"Methinks I will give this to the sparrows.\" So, throwing it from him, he brushed the crumbs from his jerkin. \"I, too,\" quoth Robin, \"have had enough, I think.\" As for Little John and the Tanner, they had by this time eaten every crumb of their bread and cheese. \"Truly, I do not mind turning a tune,\" answered Will Scarlet, \"but I would not sing alone.\" \"Nay, others will follow. Strike up, lad,\" quoth Robin. \"In that case, 'tis well,\" said Will Scarlet. \"I do call to mind a song that a certain minstrel used to sing in my father's hall, upon occasion. I know no name for it and so can give you none; but thus it is.\" Then, clearing his throat, he sang: \"_In the merry blossom time, When love longings food the breast, When the flower is on the lime, When the small fowl builds her nest, Sweetly sings the nightingale And the throstle cock so bold; Cuckoo in the dewy dale And the turtle in the word. But the robin I love dear, For he singeth through the year. Robin! Robin! Merry Robin! So I'd have my true love be: Not to fly At the nigh Sign of cold adversity_. \"_When the spring brings sweet delights, When aloft the lark doth rise, Lovers woo o' mellow nights, And youths peep in maidens' eyes, That time blooms the eglantine, Daisies pied upon the hill, Cowslips fair and columbine, Dusky violets by the rill. But the ivy green cloth grow When the north wind bringeth snow. Ivy! Ivy! Stanch and true! Thus I'd have her love to be: Not to die At the nigh Breath of cold adversity_.\" \"'Tis well sung,\" quoth Robin, \"but, cousin, I tell thee plain, I would rather hear a stout fellow like thee sing some lusty ballad than a finicking song of flowers and birds, and what not. Yet, thou didst sing it fair, and 'tis none so bad a snatch of a song, for the matter of that. Now, Tanner, it is thy turn.\" \"Nay, sing up, friend,\" quoth Little John, who sat next to him, patting him upon the shoulder. \"Thou hast a fair, round, mellow voice; let us have a touch of it.\" \"Nay, an ye will ha' a poor thing,\" said Arthur, \"I will do my best. Have ye ever heard of the wooing of Sir Keith, the stout young Cornish knight, in good King Arthur's time?\" \"Methinks I have heard somewhat of it,\" said Robin; \"but ne'ertheless strike up thy ditty and let us hear it, for, as I do remember me, it is a gallant song; so out with it, good fellow.\" Thereupon, clearing his throat, the Tanner, without more ado, began to sing: THE WOOING OF SIR KEITH \"_King Arthur sat in his royal hall, And about on either hand Was many a noble lordling tall, The greatest in the land. \"Sat Lancelot with raven locks, Gawaine with golden hair, Sir Tristram, Kay who kept the locks, And many another there. \"And through the stained windows bright, From o'er the red-tiled eaves, The sunlight blazed with light On golden helms and greaves. \"But suddenly a silence came About the Table Round, For up the hall there walked a dame Bent nigh unto the ground. \"Her nose was hooked, her eyes were bleared, Her locks were lank and white; Upon her chin there grew a beard; She was a gruesome sight. \"And so with crawling step she came And kneeled at Arthur's feet; Quoth Kay, 'She is the foulest dame That e'er my sight did greet.' \"'O mighty King! of thee I crave A boon on bended knee'; 'Twas thus she spoke. 'What wouldst thou have.' Quoth Arthur, King, 'of me_?' \"'Nor wedded may this childe have been That giveth ease to me; Nor may he be constrained, I ween, But kiss me willingly. \"'A wedded man,' quoth Arthur, King, 'A wedded man I be Else would I deem it noble thing To kiss thee willingly. \"'Now, Lancelot, in all men's sight Thou art the head and chief Of chivalry. Come, noble knight, And give her quick relief.' \"But Lancelot he turned aside And looked upon the ground, For it did sting his haughty pride To hear them laugh around. \"'Come thou, Sir Tristram,' quoth the King. Quoth he, 'It cannot be, For ne'er can I my stomach bring To do it willingly.' \"'Wilt thou, Sir Kay, thou scornful wight?' Quoth Kay, 'Nay, by my troth! What noble dame would kiss a knight That kissed so foul a mouth_?' \"'_Wilt thou, Gawaine?' 'I cannot, King.' 'Sir Geraint?' 'Nay, not I; My kisses no relief could bring, For sooner would I die.' \"Then up and spake the youngest man Of all about the board, 'Now such relief as Christian can I'll give to her, my lord.' \"It was Sir Keith, a youthful knight, Yet strong of limb and bold, With beard upon his chin as light As finest threads of gold. \"Her cheeks grew red as any rose, Her brow as white as lawn, Her bosom like the winter snows, Her eyes like those of fawn. \"Her breath grew sweet as summer breeze That blows the meadows o'er; Her voice grew soft as rustling trees, And cracked and harsh no more. \"Her hair grew glittering, like the gold, Her hands as white as milk; Her filthy rags, so foul and old, Were changed to robes of silk. \"In great amaze the knights did stare. Quoth Kay, 'I make my vow If it will please thee, lady fair, I'll gladly kiss thee now_.' \"She bent her down, she kissed his brow, She kissed his lips and eyes. Quoth she, 'Thou art my master now, My lord, my love, arise! \"'And all the wealth that is mine own, My lands, I give to thee, For never knight hath lady shown Such noble courtesy. \"'Bewitched was I, in bitter pain, But thou hast set me free, So now I am myself again, I give myself to thee_.'\" \"Yea, truly,\" quoth Robin Hood, when the Tanner had made an end of singing, \"it is as I remember it, a fair ditty, and a ballad with a pleasing tune of a song.\" \"It hath oftentimes seemed to me,\" said Will Scarlet, \"that it hath a certain motive in it, e'en such as this: That a duty which seemeth to us sometimes ugly and harsh, when we do kiss it fairly upon the mouth, so to speak, is no such foul thing after all.\" \"Methinks thou art right,\" quoth Robin, \"and, contrariwise, that when we kiss a pleasure that appeareth gay it turneth foul to us; is it not so, Little John? Truly such a thing hath brought thee sore thumps this day. Nay, man, never look down in the mouth. Clear thy pipes and sing us a ditty.\" \"Nay,\" said Little John, \"I have none as fair as that merry Arthur has trolled. They are all poor things that I know. Moreover, my voice is not in tune today, and I would not spoil even a tolerable song by ill singing.\" \"Who may yon fellow be coming along the road?\" said Robin, breaking into the song. \"I know not,\" quoth Little John in a surly voice. \"But this I do know, that it is an ill thing to do to check the flow of a good song.\" \"Nay, Little John,\" said Robin, \"be not vexed, I prythee; but I have been watching him coming along, bent beneath that great bag over his shoulder, ever since thou didst begin thy song. Look, Little John, I pray, and see if thou knowest him.\" Little John looked whither Robin Hood pointed. \"Truly,\" quoth he, after a time, \"I think yon fellow is a certain young miller I have seen now and then around the edge of Sherwood; a poor wight, methinks, to spoil a good song about.\" \"Now thou speakest of him,\" quoth Robin Hood, \"methinks I myself have seen him now and then. Hath he not a mill over beyond Nottingham Town, nigh to the Salisbury road?\" \"Thou art right; that is the man,\" said Little John. \"A good stout fellow,\" quoth Robin. \"I saw him crack Ned o' Bradford's crown about a fortnight since, and never saw I hair lifted more neatly in all my life before.\" By this time the young miller had come so near that they could see him clearly. His clothes were dusted with flour, and over his back he carried a great sack of meal, bending so as to bring the whole weight upon his shoulders, and across the sack was a thick quarterstaff. His limbs were stout and strong, and he strode along the dusty road right sturdily with the heavy sack across his shoulders. His cheeks were ruddy as a winter hip, his hair was flaxen in color, and on his chin was a downy growth of flaxen beard. \"Truly, it is a merry thought,\" said Will Scarlet. \"Prythee peace, Little John,\" quoth Robin. \"Thy foolish tongue will get us both well laughed at yet.\" \"My foolish tongue, forsooth,\" growled Little John to Arthur a Bland. \"I would it could keep our master from getting us into another coil this day.\" \"Hold, friend!\" cried Robin to the Miller; whereupon he turned slowly, with the weight of the bag upon his shoulder, and looked at each in turn all bewildered, for though a good stout man his wits did not skip like roasting chestnuts. \"Who bids me stay?\" said the Miller in a voice deep and gruff, like the growl of a great dog. \"Marry, that do I,\" quoth Robin; \"and let me tell thee, friend, thou hadst best mind my bidding.\" \"And who art thou, good friend?\" said the Miller, throwing the great sack of meal from his shoulder to the ground, \"and who are those with thee?\" \"I give you all thanks,\" said the Miller, \"but my bag is none that heavy that I cannot carry it e'en by myself.\" \"Alas!\" cried the Miller, \"what would ye do to me? I have not about me so much as a clipped groat. Do me no harm, I pray you, but let me depart in peace. Moreover, let me tell you that ye are upon Robin Hood's ground, and should he find you seeking to rob an honest craftsman, he will clip your ears to your heads and scourge you even to the walls of Nottingham. \"In truth I fear Robin Hood no more than I do myself,\" quoth jolly Robin. \"Thou must this day give up to me every penny thou hast about thee. Nay, if thou dost budge an inch I will rattle this staff about thine ears.\" \"Nay, smite me not!\" cried the Miller, throwing up his elbow as though he feared the blow. \"Thou mayst search me if thou wilt, but thou wilt find nothing upon me, pouch, pocket, or skin.\" \"Alas!\" cried the Miller, falling upon his knees, \"spoil not all my good meal! It can better you not, and will ruin me. Spare it, and I will give up the money in the bag.\" \"Ha!\" quoth Robin, nudging Will Scarlet. \"Is it so? And have I found where thy money lies? Marry, I have a wondrous nose for the blessed image of good King Harry. I thought that I smelled gold and silver beneath the barley meal. Bring it straight forth, Miller.\" Then slowly the Miller arose to his feet, and slowly and unwillingly he untied the mouth of the bag, and slowly thrust his hands into the meal and began fumbling about with his arms buried to the elbows in the barley flour. The others gathered round him, their heads together, looking and wondering what he would bring forth. \"Stop!\" roared Robin at last. \"Give over, good friend, I am Robin Hood!\" \"Quick!\" cried young David of Doncaster. \"Our master is in sore need!\" So, without stopping a moment, they dashed forward with might and main and burst forth from the covert into the highroad. \"Why,\" quoth Robin in a mighty passion, \"yon traitor felt low hath come as nigh slaying me as e'er a man in all the world. Hadst thou not come quickly, good Stutely, thy master had been dead.\" \"Quick, men, seize the vile Miller!\" cried Stutely, who was nigh choking with laughter as were the rest; whereupon several ran upon the stout fellow and seizing him, bound his arms behind his back with bowstrings. Now when they saw their master laugh, the yeomen who stood around could contain themselves no longer, and a mighty shout of laughter went up from all. Many could not stand, but rolled upon the ground from pure merriment. \"What is thy name, good fellow?\" said Robin at last to the Miller, who stood gaping and as though he were in amaze. \"Alas, sir, I am Midge, the Miller's son,\" said he in a frightened voice. \"I make my vow,\" quoth merry Robin, smiting him upon the shoulder, \"thou art the mightiest Midge that e'er mine eyes beheld. Now wilt thou leave thy dusty mill and come and join my band? By my faith, thou art too stout a man to spend thy days betwixt the hopper and the till.\" \"Then truly, if thou dost forgive me for the blows I struck, not knowing who thou wast, I will join with thee right merrily,\" said the Miller. Robin Hood and Allan a Dale At this all laughed but Little John and Robin, who twisted up his face. \"I can speak for Midge,\" said he, \"and likewise for my cousin Scarlet. This very blessed morn I looked at my ribs and found them as many colors as a beggar's cloak.\" At last the sun began to sink low in the heavens; the light grew red and the shadows long. The air grew full of silence, the birds twittered sleepily, and from afar came, faint and clear, the musical song of the milkmaid calling the kine home to the milking. \"Ha!\" quoth Will Scarlet, \"this must be looked into. There is someone in distress nigh to us here.\" \"I know not,\" quoth Will Stutely, shaking his head doubtfully, \"our master is ever rash about thrusting his finger into a boiling pot; but, for my part, I see no use in getting ourselves into mischievous coils. Yon is a man's voice, if I mistake not, and a man should be always ready to get himself out from his own pothers.\" Then out spake Will Scarlet boldly. \"Now out upon thee, to talk in that manner, Stutely! Stay, if thou dost list. I go to see what may be the trouble of this poor creature.\" \"Halloa!\" shouted Will Stutely, when they had come out from the forest into the little open spot. \"Who art thou, fellow, that liest there killing all the green grass with salt water?\" Hearing the voice, the stranger sprang to his feet and; snatching up his bow and fitting a shaft, held himself in readiness for whatever ill might befall him. The youth did as he was bidden and, with bowed head and sorrowful step, accompanied the others, walking beside Will Scarlet. So they wended their way through the forest. The bright light faded from the sky and a glimmering gray fell over all things. From the deeper recesses of the forest the strange whispering sounds of night-time came to the ear; all else was silent, saving only for the rattling of their footsteps amid the crisp, dry leaves of the last winter. At last a ruddy glow shone before them here and there through the trees; a little farther and they came to the open glade, now bathed in the pale moonlight. In the center of the open crackled a great fire, throwing a red glow on all around. At the fire were roasting juicy steaks of venison, pheasants, capons, and fresh fish from the river. All the air was filled with the sweet smell of good things cooking. \"Good even, fair friend,\" said Robin Hood, rising as the other drew near. \"And hast thou come to feast with me this day?\" \"Alas! I know not,\" said the lad, looking around him with dazed eyes, for he was bewildered with all that he saw. \"Truly, I know not whether I be in a dream,\" said he to himself in a low voice. \"Nay, marry,\" quoth Robin, laughing, \"thou art awake, as thou wilt presently find, for a fine feast is a-cooking for thee. Thou art our honored guest this day.\" Still the young stranger looked about him, as though in a dream. Presently he turned to Robin. \"Methinks,\" said he, \"I know now where I am and what hath befallen me. Art not thou the great Robin Hood?\" \"Thou hast hit the bull's eye,\" quoth Robin, clapping him upon the shoulder. \"Men hereabouts do call me by that name. Sin' thou knowest me, thou knowest also that he who feasteth with me must pay his reckoning. I trust thou hast a full purse with thee, fair stranger.\" At this speech a great shout of laughter went up from those around, whereat the poor boy looked as he would die of shame; but Robin Hood turned sharply to Will Stutely. \"Why, how now,\" quoth he, \"is this the guest that thou hast brought us to fill our purse? Methinks thou hast brought but a lean cock to the market.\" \"Nay, good master,\" answered Will Stutely, grinning, \"he is no guest of mine; it was Will Scarlet that brought him thither.\" Then up spoke Will Scarlet, and told how they had found the lad in sorrow, and how he had brought him to Robin, thinking that he might perchance aid him in his trouble. Then Robin Hood turned to the youth, and, placing his hand upon the other's shoulder, held him off at arm's length, scanning his face closely. \"Allen a Dale is my name, good master.\" \"Allen a Dale,\" repeated Robin, musing. \"Allen a Dale. It doth seem to me that the name is not altogether strange to mine ears. Yea, surely thou art the minstrel of whom we have been hearing lately, whose voice so charmeth all men. Dost thou not come from the Dale of Rotherstream, over beyond Stavely?\" \"Yea, truly,\" answered Allan, \"I do come thence.\" \"How old art thou, Allan?\" said Robin. \"Methinks thou art overyoung to be perplexed with trouble,\" quoth Robin kindly; then, turning to the others, he cried, \"Come, lads, busk ye and get our feast ready; only thou, Will Scarlet, and thou, Little John, stay here with me.\" To all this the yeomen listened in silence, the clatter of many voices, jesting and laughing, sounding around them, and the red light of the fire shining on their faces and in their eyes. So simple were the poor boy's words, and so deep his sorrow, that even Little John felt a certain knotty lump rise in his throat. \"I wonder not,\" said Robin, after a moment's silence, \"that thy true love loved thee, for thou hast surely a silver cross beneath thy tongue, even like good Saint Francis, that could charm the birds of the air by his speech.\" Then up spoke Will Scarlet. \"Methinks it seemeth but ill done of the lass that she should so quickly change at others' bidding, more especially when it cometh to the marrying of a man as old as this same Sir Stephen. I like it not in her, Allan.\" \"Ay, marry would she,\" cried Allan eagerly. \"Nay,\" quoth Will Scarlet, laughing, \"so far as that goeth, I know of a certain friar that, couldst thou but get on the soft side of him, would do thy business even though Pope Joan herself stood forth to ban him. He is known as the Curtal Friar of Fountain Abbey, and dwelleth in Fountain Dale.\" At last the feast was done, and Robin Hood turned to Allan, who sat beside him. \"Now, Allan,\" quoth he, \"so much has been said of thy singing that we would fain have a taste of thy skill ourselves. Canst thou not give us something?\" (Giving an account of how she was beloved by a fairy prince, who took her to his own home.) \"_May Ellen sat beneath a thorn And in a shower around The blossoms fell at every breeze Like snow upon the ground, And in a lime tree near was heard The sweet song of a strange, wild bird. \"O sweet, sweet, sweet, O piercing sweet, O lingering sweet the strain! May Ellen's heart within her breast Stood still with blissful pain: And so, with listening, upturned face, She sat as dead in that fair place. \"'Come down from out the blossoms, bird! Come down from out the tree, And on my heart I'll let thee lie, And love thee tenderly!' Thus cried May Ellen, soft and low, From where the hawthorn shed its snow. \"Down dropped the bird on quivering wing, From out the blossoming tree, And nestled in her snowy breast. 'My love! my love!' cried she; Then straightway home, 'mid sun and flower, She bare him to her own sweet bower. \"The day hath passed to mellow night, The moon floats o'er the lea, And in its solemn, pallid light A youth stands silently: A youth of beauty strange and rare, Within May Ellen's bower there. \"He stood where o'er the pavement cold The glimmering moonbeams lay. May Ellen gazed with wide, scared eyes, Nor could she turn away, For, as in mystic dreams we see A spirit, stood he silently. \"All in a low and breathless voice, 'Whence comest thou?' said she; 'Art thou the creature of a dream, Or a vision that I see?' Then soft spake he, as night winds shiver Through straining reeds beside the river. \"'I came, a bird on feathered wing, From distant Faeryland Where murmuring waters softly sing Upon the golden strand, Where sweet trees are forever green; And there my mother is the queen.' \"No more May Ellen leaves her bower To grace the blossoms fair; But in the hushed and midnight hour They hear her talking there, Or, when the moon is shining white, They hear her singing through the night. \"'Oh, don thy silks and jewels fine,' May Ellen's mother said, 'For hither comes the Lord of Lyne And thou this lord must wed.' May Ellen said, 'It may not be. He ne'er shall find his wife in me.' \"Up spoke her brother, dark and grim: 'Now by the bright blue sky, E'er yet a day hath gone for him Thy wicked bird shall die! For he hath wrought thee bitter harm, By some strange art or cunning charm.' \"Then, with a sad and mournful song, Away the bird did fly, And o'er the castle eaves, and through The gray and windy sky. 'Come forth!' then cried the brother grim, 'Why dost thou gaze so after him?' \"It is May Ellen's wedding day, The sky is blue and fair, And many a lord and lady gay In church are gathered there. The bridegroom was Sir Hugh the Bold, All clad in silk and cloth of gold. \"In came the bride in samite white With a white wreath on her head; Her eyes were fixed with a glassy look, Her face was as the dead, And when she stood among the throng, She sang a wild and wondrous song. \"By my faith and my troth,\" quoth Robin at last, drawing a deep breath, \"lad, thou art--Thou must not leave our company, Allan! Wilt thou not stay with us here in the sweet green forest? Truly, I do feel my heart go out toward thee with great love.\" Then Allan took Robin's hand and kissed it. \"I will stay with thee always, dear master,\" said he, \"for never have I known such kindness as thou hast shown me this day.\" Robin Hood Seeks the Curtal Friar THE STOUT YEOMEN of Sherwood Forest were ever early risers of a morn, more especially when the summertime had come, for then in the freshness of the dawn the dew was always the brightest, and the song of the small birds the sweetest. \"Now, good uncle,\" quoth Will Scarlet at last, when they had walked for a long time beside this sweet, bright river, \"just beyond yon bend ahead of us is a shallow ford which in no place is deeper than thy mid-thigh, and upon the other side of the stream is a certain little hermitage hidden amidst the bosky tangle of the thickets wherein dwelleth the Friar of Fountain Dale. Thither will I lead thee, for I know the way; albeit it is not overhard to find.\" \"Nay,\" quoth jolly Robin, stopping suddenly, \"had I thought that I should have had to wade water, even were it so crystal a stream as this, I had donned other clothes than I have upon me. But no matter now, for after all a wetting will not wash the skin away, and what must be, must. But bide ye here, lads, for I would enjoy this merry adventure alone. Nevertheless, listen well, and if ye hear me sound upon my bugle horn, come quickly.\" So saying, he turned and left them, striding onward alone. \"By my faith,\" quoth Robin to himself, \"I do verily believe that this is the merriest feast, the merriest wight, the merriest place, and the merriest sight in all merry England. Methought there was another here, but it must have been this holy man talking to himself.\" THE LOVING YOUTH AND THE SCORNFUL MAID _HE \"Ah, it's wilt thou come with me, my love? And it's wilt thou, love, he mine? For I will give unto thee, my love, Gay knots and ribbons so fine. I'll woo thee, love, on my bended knee, And I'll pipe sweet songs to none but thee. Then it's hark! hark! hark! To the winged lark And it's hark to the cooing dove! And the bright daffodil Groweth down by the rill, So come thou and be my love. SHE \"Now get thee away, young man so fine; Now get thee away, I say; For my true love shall never be thine, And so thou hadst better not stay. Thou art not a fine enough lad for me, So I'll wait till a better young man I see. For it's hark! hark! hark! To the winged lark, And it's hark to the cooing dove! And the bright daffodil Groweth down by the rill, Yet never I'll be thy love. HE \"Then straight will I seek for another fair she, For many a maid can be found, And as thou wilt never have aught of me, By thee will I never be bound. For never is a blossom in the field so rare, But others are found that are just as fair. So it's hark! hark! hark! To the joyous lark And it's hark to the cooing dove! And the bright daffodil Groweth down by the rill, And I'll seek me another dear love. SHE \"Young man, turn not so very quick away Another fair lass to find. Methinks I have spoken in haste today, Nor have I made up my mind_, _And if thou only wilt stay with me, I'll love no other, sweet lad, but thee_.\" \"_So it's hark! hark! hark! To the joyous lark And it's hark to the cooing dove! For the bright daffodil Groweth down by the rill And I'll be thine own true love_.\" \"Nay, put up thy pinking iron, friend,\" quoth Robin, standing up with the tears of laughter still on his cheeks. \"Folk who have sung so sweetly together should not fight thereafter.\" Hereupon he leaped down the bank to where the other stood. \"I tell thee, friend,\" said he, \"my throat is as parched with that song as e'er a barley stubble in October. Hast thou haply any Malmsey left in that stout pottle?\" \"Truly,\" said the Friar in a glum voice, \"thou dost ask thyself freely where thou art not bidden. Yet I trust I am too good a Christian to refuse any man drink that is athirst. Such as there is o't thou art welcome to a drink of the same.\" And he held the pottle out to Robin. \"Doss thou know the country hereabouts, thou good and holy man?\" asked Robin, laughing. \"Yea, somewhat,\" answered the other dryly. \"And dost thou know of a certain spot called Fountain Abbey?\" \"Well then, good fellow, holy father, or whatever thou art,\" quoth Robin, \"I would know whether this same Friar is to be found upon this side of the river or the other.\" \"I do wish much,\" quoth Robin, looking thoughtfully at the stout priest, \"to cross yon ford and strive to find this same good Friar.\" \"Yea, good father,\" said Robin, \"but thou seest that my clothes are of the finest and I fain would not get them wet. Methinks thy shoulders are stout and broad; couldst thou not find it in thy heart to carry me across?\" \"Did not the holy Saint Christopher ever carry the stranger across the river? And should I, poor sinner that I am, be ashamed to do likewise? Come with me, stranger, and I will do thy bidding in an humble frame of mind.\" So saying, he clambered up the bank, closely followed by Robin, and led the way to the shallow pebbly ford, chuckling to himself the while as though he were enjoying some goodly jest within himself. Having come to the ford, he girded up his robes about his loins, tucked his good broadsword beneath his arm, and stooped his back to take Robin upon it. Suddenly he straightened up. \"Methinks,\" quoth he, \"thou'lt get thy weapon wet. Let me tuck it beneath mine arm along with mine own.\" \"Nay, good father,\" said Robin, \"I would not burden thee with aught of mine but myself.\" \"Dost thou think,\" said the Friar mildly, \"that the good Saint Christopher would ha' sought his own ease so? Nay, give me thy tool as I bid thee, for I would carry it as a penance to my pride.\" \"Many thanks, good father,\" quoth he. \"Thou art indeed a good and holy man. Prythee give me my sword and let me away, for I am in haste.\" \"Nay,\" interrupted the Friar, \"I bid thee speak not so scurrilously neither, lest thou mayst perchance feel the prick of an inch or so of blue steel.\" \"Tut, tut,\" said Robin, \"speak not so, Friar; the loser hath ever the right to use his tongue as he doth list. Give me my sword; I do promise to carry thee back straightway. Nay, I will not lift the weapon against thee.\" \"Marry, come up,\" quoth the Friar, \"I fear thee not, fellow. Here is thy skewer; and get thyself presently ready, for I would hasten back.\" So Robin took his sword again and buckled it at his side; then he bent his stout back and took the Friar upon it. Now I wot Robin Hood had a heavier load to carry in the Friar than the Friar had in him. Moreover he did not know the ford, so he went stumbling among the stones, now stepping into a deep hole, and now nearly tripping over a boulder, while the sweat ran down his face in beads from the hardness of his journey and the heaviness of his load. Meantime, the Friar kept digging his heels into Robin's sides and bidding him hasten, calling him many ill names the while. To all this Robin answered never a word, but, having softly felt around till he found the buckle of the belt that held the Friar's sword, he worked slyly at the fastenings, seeking to loosen them. Thus it came about that, by the time he had reached the other bank with his load, the Friar's sword belt was loose albeit he knew it not; so when Robin stood on dry land and the Friar leaped from his back, the yeoman gripped hold of the sword so that blade, sheath, and strap came away from the holy man, leaving him without a weapon. The good Friar said not a word for a while, but he looked at Robin with a grim look. \"Now,\" said he at last, \"I did think that thy wits were of the heavy sort and knew not that thou wert so cunning. Truly, thou hast me upon the hip. Give me my sword, and I promise not to draw it against thee save in self-defense; also, I promise to do thy bidding and take thee upon my back and carry thee.\" Down went Robin into the water with a mighty splash. \"There,\" quoth the holy man, calmly turning back again to the shore, \"let that cool thy hot spirit, if it may.\" Meantime, after much splashing, Robin had gotten to his feet and stood gazing about him all bewildered, the water running from him in pretty little rills. At last he shot the water out of his ears and spat some out of his mouth, and, gathering his scattered wits together, saw the stout Friar standing on the bank and laughing. Then, I wot, was Robin Hood a mad man. \"Stay, thou villain!\" roared he, \"I am after thee straight, and if I do not carve thy brawn for thee this day, may I never lift finger again!\" So saying, he dashed, splashing, to the bank. \"Thou needst not hasten thyself unduly,\" quoth the stout Friar. \"Fear not; I will abide here, and if thou dost not cry 'Alack-a-day' ere long time is gone, may I never more peep through the brake at a fallow deer.\" And now Robin, having reached the bank, began, without more ado, to roll up his sleeves above his wrists. The Friar, also, tucked his robes more about him, showing a great, stout arm on which the muscles stood out like humps of an aged tree. Then Robin saw, what he had not wotted of before, that the Friar had also a coat of chain mail beneath his gown. \"Look to thyself,\" cried Robin, drawing his good sword. \"Now I crave a boon ere we begin again,\" quoth Robin, wiping the sweat from his brow; for they had striven so long that he began to think that it would be an ill-done thing either to be smitten himself or to smite so stout and brave a fellow. \"What wouldst thou have of me?\" asked the Friar. Meantime, the Friar stood watching keenly for what might come to pass, holding in his fingers the while a pretty silver whistle, such as knights use for calling their hawks back to their wrists, which whistle always hung at his girdle along with his rosary. \"Truly, good master,\" said the Friar, looking somewhat abashed and reaching out his great palm to Robin, \"I ha' oft heard thy name both sung and spoken of, but I never thought to meet thee in battle. I crave thy forgiveness, and do wonder not that I found so stout a man against me.\" \"Truly, most holy father,\" said Little John, \"I am more thankful than e'er I was in all my life before that our good friend Scarlet knew thee and thy dogs. I tell thee seriously that I felt my heart crumble away from me when I saw my shaft so miss its aim, and those great beasts of thine coming straight at me.\" \"Thou mayst indeed be thankful, friend,\" said the Friar gravely. \"But, Master Will, how cometh it that thou dost now abide in Sherwood?\" \"Why, Tuck, dost thou not know of my ill happening with my father's steward?\" answered Scarlet. \"But we are losing time,\" quoth Robin, \"and I have yet to find that same Curtal Friar.\" \"Why, uncle, thou hast not far to go,\" said Will Scarlet, pointing to the Friar, \"for there he stands beside thee.\" \"How?\" quoth Robin, \"art thou the man that I have been at such pains to seek all day, and have got such a ducking for?\" \"Why, truly,\" said the Friar demurely, \"some do call me the Curtal Friar of Fountain Dale; others again call me in jest the Abbot of Fountain Abbey; others still again call me simple Friar Tuck.\" \"I like the last name best,\" quoth Robin, \"for it doth slip more glibly off the tongue. But why didst thou not tell me thou wert he I sought, instead of sending me searching for black moonbeams?\" \"Why, truly, thou didst not ask me, good master,\" quoth stout Tuck; \"but what didst thou desire of me?\" \"Nay,\" quoth Robin, \"the day groweth late, and we cannot stand longer talking here. Come back with us to Sherwood, and I will unfold all to thee as we travel along.\" So, without tarrying longer, they all departed, with the stout dogs at their heels, and wended their way back to Sherwood again; but it was long past nightfall ere they reached the greenwood tree. Robin Hood Compasses a Marriage All the band stared and many laughed, for never had they seen their master in such a fantastic guise before. \"Why, master,\" quoth Little John, taking the bags and weighing them in his hand, \"here is the chink of gold.\" \"Well, what an there be,\" said Robin, \"it is mine own coin and the band is none the worse for what is there. Come, busk ye, lads,\" and he turned quickly away. \"Get ye ready straightway.\" Then gathering the score together in a close rank, in the midst of which were Allan a Dale and Friar Tuck, he led them forth upon their way from the forest shades. \"Truly,\" quoth he, \"the dear world is as fair here as in the woodland shades. Who calls it a vale of tears? Methinks it is but the darkness in our minds that bringeth gloom to the world. For what sayeth that merry song thou singest, Little John? Is it not thus? \"_For when my love's eyes do thine, do thine, And when her lips smile so rare, The day it is jocund and fine, so fine, Though let it be wet or be fair And when the stout ale is all flowing so fast, Our sorrows and troubles are things of the past_.\" \"Nay,\" said Friar Tuck piously, \"ye do think of profane things and of nought else; yet, truly, there be better safeguards against care and woe than ale drinking and bright eyes, to wit, fasting and meditation. Look upon me, have I the likeness of a sorrowful man?\" \"Truly,\" quoth Robin, when he could speak for laughter, \"I should say that thy sorrows were about equal to thy goodliness.\" So they stepped along, talking, singing, jesting, and laughing, until they had come to a certain little church that belonged to the great estates owned by the rich Priory of Emmet. Here it was that fair Ellen was to be married on that morn, and here was the spot toward which the yeomen had pointed their toes. On the other side of the road from where the church stood with waving fields of barley around, ran a stone wall along the roadside. Over the wall from the highway was a fringe of young trees and bushes, and here and there the wall itself was covered by a mass of blossoming woodbine that filled all the warm air far and near with its sweet summer odor. Then straightway the yeomen leaped over the wall, alighting on the tall soft grass upon the other side, frightening a flock of sheep that lay there in the shade so that they scampered away in all directions. Here was a sweet cool shadow both from the wall and from the fair young trees and bushes, and here sat the yeomen down, and glad enough they were to rest after their long tramp of the morning. Then up spoke Robin, \"Now tell us, young David of Doncaster, what dost thou see?\" So silence fell again and another time passed, broken only as I have said, till Robin, growing impatient, spake again. \"Now tell me, young David, what dost thou see by this?\" So Friar Tuck clambered over the wall, crossed the road, and came to the church, where the old friar was still laboring with the great key, the lock being somewhat rusty and he somewhat old and feeble. \"Hilloa, brother,\" quoth Tuck, \"let me aid thee.\" So saying, he took the key from the other's hand and quickly opened the door with a turn of it. \"Who art thou, good brother?\" asked the old friar, in a high, wheezing voice. \"Whence comest thou, and whither art thou going?\" And he winked and blinked at stout Friar Tuck like an owl at the sun. When Robin saw this train drawing near, with flash of jewels and silk and jingle of silver bells on the trappings of the nags, he looked sourly upon them. Quoth he to himself, \"Yon Bishop is overgaudy for a holy man. I do wonder whether his patron, who, methinks, was Saint Thomas, was given to wearing golden chains about his neck, silk clothing upon his body, and pointed shoes upon his feet; the money for all of which, God wot, hath been wrung from the sweat of poor tenants. Bishop, Bishop, thy pride may have a fall ere thou wottest of it.\" So the holy men came to the church; the Bishop and the Prior jesting and laughing between themselves about certain fair dames, their words more befitting the lips of laymen, methinks, than holy clerks. Then they dismounted, and the Bishop, looking around, presently caught sight of Robin standing in the doorway. \"Hilloa, good fellow,\" quoth he in a jovial voice, \"who art thou that struttest in such gay feathers?\" \"Ha! is it so?\" cried the Bishop. \"Meanest thou this in sooth?\" And he looked keenly at Robin, who gazed boldly back again into his eyes. \"Now, if thou wilt cause this maiden (who hath verily bewitched my poor cousin Stephen) thus to love the man she is to marry, as thou sayst thou canst, I will give thee whatsoever thou wilt ask me in due measure. Let me have a taste of thy skill, fellow.\" \"Nay,\" quoth Robin, \"my music cometh not without I choose, even at a lord bishop's bidding. In sooth, I will not play until the bride and bridegroom come.\" \"Now, thou art a saucy varlet to speak so to my crest,\" quoth the Bishop, frowning on Robin. \"Yet, I must needs bear with thee. Look, Prior, hither cometh our cousin Sir Stephen, and his ladylove.\" So these also came to the church, and there Sir Stephen leaped from his horse and, coming to the litter, handed fair Ellen out therefrom. Then Robin Hood looked at her, and could wonder no longer how it came about that so proud a knight as Sir Stephen of Trent wished to marry a common franklin's daughter; nor did he wonder that no ado was made about the matter, for she was the fairest maiden that ever he had beheld. Now, however, she was all pale and drooping, like a fair white lily snapped at the stem; and so, with bent head and sorrowful look, she went within the church, Sir Stephen leading her by the hand. \"Why dost thou not play, fellow?\" quoth the Bishop, looking sternly at Robin. \"Marry,\" said Robin calmly, \"I will play in greater wise than Your Lordship thinks, but not till the right time hath come.\" Said the Bishop to himself, while he looked grimly at Robin, \"When this wedding is gone by I will have this fellow well whipped for his saucy tongue and bold speech.\" \"Let me look upon this lass,\" he said in a loud voice. \"Why, how now! What have we here? Here be lilies in the cheeks, and not roses such as befit a bonny bride. This is no fit wedding. Thou, Sir Knight, so old, and she so young, and thou thinkest to make her thy wife? I tell thee it may not be, for thou art not her own true love.\" And now all was hubbub and noise. Stout Edward strode forward raging, and would have seized his daughter to drag her away, but Little John stepped between and thrust him back. \"Stand back, old man,\" said he, \"thou art a hobbled horse this day.\" \"Down with the villains!\" cried Sir Stephen, and felt for his sword, but it hung not beside him on his wedding day. Then up spake Edward of Deirwold in a deep voice of anger, \"Is it thou, Allan a Dale, that hath bred all this coil in a church?\" \"Nay,\" quoth merry Robin, \"that have I done, and I care not who knoweth it, for my name is Robin Hood.\" At this name a sudden silence fell. The Prior of Emmet and those that belonged to him gathered together like a flock of frightened sheep when the scent of the wolf is nigh, while the Bishop of Hereford, laying aside his book, crossed himself devoutly. \"Now Heaven keep us this day,\" said he, \"from that evil man!\" Then up spake stout Edward in a loud and angry voice, \"Now I say nay! I am her father, and she shall marry Sir Stephen and none other.\" Now all this time, while everything was in turmoil about him, Sir Stephen had been standing in proud and scornful silence. \"Nay, fellow,\" said he coldly, \"thou mayst take thy daughter back again; I would not marry her after this day's doings could I gain all merry England thereby. I tell thee plainly, I loved thy daughter, old as I am, and would have taken her up like a jewel from the sty, yet, truly, I knew not that she did love this fellow, and was beloved by him. Maiden, if thou dost rather choose a beggarly minstrel than a high-born knight, take thy choice. I do feel it shame that I should thus stand talking amid this herd, and so I will leave you.\" Thus saying, he turned and, gathering his men about him, walked proudly down the aisle. Then all the yeomen were silenced by the scorn of his words. Only Friar Tuck leaned over the edge of the choir loft and called out to him ere he had gone, \"Good den, Sir Knight. Thou wottest old bones must alway make room for young blood.\" Sir Stephen neither answered nor looked up, but passed out from the church as though he had heard nought, his men following him. Then the Bishop of Hereford spoke hastily, \"I, too, have no business here, and so will depart.\" And he made as though he would go. But Robin Hood laid hold of his clothes and held him. \"Stay, my Lord Bishop,\" said he, \"I have yet somewhat to say to thee.\" The Bishop's face fell, but he stayed as Robin bade him, for he saw he could not go. Then at last jolly Robin turned to the Bishop of Hereford, who had been looking on at all that passed with a grim look. \"My Lord Bishop,\" quoth he, \"thou mayst bring to thy mind that thou didst promise me that did I play in such wise as to cause this fair lass to love her husband, thou wouldst give me whatsoever I asked in reason. I have played my play, and she loveth her husband, which she would not have done but for me; so now fulfill thy promise. Thou hast upon thee that which, methinks, thou wouldst be the better without; therefore, I prythee, give me that golden chain that hangeth about thy neck as a wedding present for this fair bride.\" Then the Bishop's cheeks grew red with rage and his eyes flashed. He looked at Robin with a fell look, but saw that in the yeoman's face which bade him pause. Then slowly he took the chain from about his neck and handed it to Robin, who flung it over Ellen's head so that it hung glittering about her shoulders. Then said merry Robin, \"I thank thee, on the bride's part, for thy handsome gift, and truly thou thyself art more seemly without it. Now, shouldst thou ever come nigh to Sherwood I much hope that I shall give thee there such a feast as thou hast ne'er had in all thy life before.\" \"May Heaven forfend!\" cried the Bishop earnestly; for he knew right well what manner of feast it was that Robin Hood gave his guests in Sherwood Forest. That night there was such a feast held in the greenwood as Nottinghamshire never saw before. To that feast you and I were not bidden, and pity it is that we were not; so, lest we should both feel the matter the more keenly, I will say no more about it. Robin Hood Aids a Sorrowful Knight SO PASSED the gentle springtime away in budding beauty; its silver showers and sunshine, its green meadows and its flowers. So, likewise, passed the summer with its yellow sunlight, its quivering heat and deep, bosky foliage, its long twilights and its mellow nights, through which the frogs croaked and fairy folk were said to be out on the hillsides. All this had passed and the time of fall had come, bringing with it its own pleasures and joyousness; for now, when the harvest was gathered home, merry bands of gleaners roamed the country about, singing along the roads in the daytime, and sleeping beneath the hedgerows and the hay-ricks at night. Now the hips burned red in the tangled thickets and the hews waxed black in the hedgerows, the stubble lay all crisp and naked to the sky, and the green leaves were fast turning russet and brown. Also, at this merry season, good things of the year are gathered in in great store. Brown ale lies ripening in the cellar, hams and bacon hang in the smoke-shed, and crabs are stowed away in the straw for roasting in the wintertime, when the north wind piles the snow in drifts around the gables and the fire crackles warm upon the hearth. So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in time to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten. \"Marry,\" cried Little John, clapping his palms together for joy, \"thy bidding fitteth my liking like heft to blade. I'll bring thee back a guest this day, or come not back mine own self.\" Then they each chose such of the band as they wished, and so went forth by different paths from the forest. Quoth Robin Hood, \"Yon is verily a sorry-looking gallant, and doth seem to have donned ill-content with his jerkin this morning; nevertheless, I will out and talk with him, for there may be some pickings here for a hungry daw. Methinks his dress is rich, though he himself is so downcast. Bide ye here till I look into this matter.\" So saying, he arose and left them, crossed the road to the shrine, and there stood, waiting for the sorrowful knight to come near him. So, presently, when the knight came riding slowly along, jolly Robin stepped forward and laid his hand upon the bridle rein. \"Hold, Sir Knight,\" quoth he. \"I prythee tarry for a short time, for I have a few words to say to thee.\" \"What art thou, friend, who dost stop a traveler in this manner upon his most gracious Majesty's highway?\" said the Knight. \"Truly, good Robin,\" said the Knight, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, \"thou hast a quaint conceit. As for the pair of eyes with which I regard thee, I would say that they are as favorable as may be, for I hear much good of thee and little ill. What is thy will of me?\" \"Now, I make my vow, Sir Knight,\" quoth Robin, \"thou hast surely learned thy wisdom of good Gaffer Swanthold, for he sayeth, 'Fair words are as easy spoke as foul, and bring good will in the stead of blows.' Now I will show thee the truth of this saying; for, if thou wilt go with me this day to Sherwood Forest, I will give thee as merry a feast as ever thou hadst in all thy life.\" \"Thou art indeed kind,\" said the Knight, \"but methinks thou wilt find me but an ill-seeming and sorrowful guest. Thou hadst best let me pass on my way in peace.\" \"I take thy meaning, friend,\" said the Knight gravely, \"but I am not thy man, for I have no money by me.\" \"Is it sooth?\" said Robin, looking at the Knight keenly. \"I can scarce choose but believe thee; yet, Sir Knight, there be those of thy order whose word is not to be trusted as much as they would have others believe. Thou wilt think no ill if I look for myself in this matter.\" Then, still holding the horse by the bridle rein, he put his fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle, whereupon fourscore yeomen came leaping over the stile and ran to where the Knight and Robin stood. \"These,\" said Robin, looking upon them proudly, \"are some of my merry men. They share and share alike with me all joys and troubles, gains and losses. Sir Knight, I prythee tell me what money thou hast about thee.\" When Sir Richard ended a silence fell, until at last Robin said, \"And dost thou pledge me thy knightly word that this is all thou hast with thee?\" \"Yea,\" answered Sir Richard, \"I do pledge thee my most solemn word, as a true knight, that it is all the money I have in the world. Nay, here is my purse, ye may find for yourselves the truth of what I say.\" And he held his purse out to Robin. \"Put up thy purse, Sir Richard,\" quoth Robin. \"Far be it from me to doubt the word of so gentle a knight. The proud I strive to bring low, but those that walk in sorrow I would aid if I could. Come, Sir Richard, cheer up thy heart and go with us into the greenwood. Even I may perchance aid thee, for thou surely knowest how the good Athelstane was saved by the little blind mole that digged a trench over which he that sought the king's life stumbled.\" After they had traveled thus for a time Robin Hood spake. \"Sir Knight,\" said he, \"I would not trouble thee with idle questions; but dost thou find it in thy heart to tell me thy sorrows?\" Quoth Robin, \"I understand not why those of thy kind live in such a manner that all their wealth passeth from them like snow beneath the springtide sun.\" \"But where is thy son now?\" asked Robin, who had listened closely to all the Knight had said. \"In Palestine,\" said Sir Richard, \"battling like a brave Christian soldier for the cross and the holy sepulcher. Truly, England was an ill place for him because of Sir Walter's death and the hate of the Lancastrian's kinsmen.\" \"Truly,\" said Robin, much moved, \"thine is a hard lot. But tell me, what is owing to Emmet for thine estates?\" \"It is not mine own lot that doth trouble me in that case,\" said the Knight, \"but my dear lady's; for should I lose my land she will have to betake herself to some kinsman and there abide in charity, which, methinks, would break her proud heart. As for me, I will over the salt sea, and so to Palestine to join my son in fight for the holy sepulcher.\" Then up spake Will Scarlet. \"But hast thou no friend that will help thee in thy dire need?\" \"Never a man,\" said Sir Richard. \"While I was rich enow at home, and had friends, they blew great boasts of how they loved me. But when the oak falls in the forest the swine run from beneath it lest they should be smitten down also. So my friends have left me; for not only am I poor but I have great enemies.\" Then Robin said, \"Thou sayst thou hast no friends, Sir Richard. I make no boast, but many have found Robin Hood a friend in their troubles. Cheer up, Sir Knight, I may help thee yet.\" The Knight shook his head with a faint smile, but for all that, Robin's words made him more blithe of heart, for in truth hope, be it never so faint, bringeth a gleam into darkness, like a little rushlight that costeth but a groat. \"Stay, my Lord Bishop,\" cried jolly Robin in a loud voice, when he saw what had passed, \"I will come to thee with all speed, for I would rather see thee than any man in merry England.\" So saying, he quickened his steps and soon came to where the Bishop stood fuming. At this, the Bishop glared like an angry cat, while even Sir Richard laughed; only Robin kept a grave face. \"Alas! my lord,\" said he, \"that thou hast been so ill-treated by my band! I tell thee truly that we greatly reverence thy cloth. Little John, stand forth straightway.\" At these words Little John came forward, twisting his face into a whimsical look, as though he would say, \"Ha' mercy upon me, good master.\" Then Robin turned to the Bishop of Hereford and said, \"Was this the man who spake so boldly to Your Lordship?\" \"Ay, truly it was the same,\" said the Bishop, \"a naughty fellow, I wot. \"And didst thou, Little John,\" said Robin in a sad voice, \"call his lordship a fat priest?\" \"Ay,\" said Little John sorrowfully. \"And a man-eating bishop?\" \"Ay,\" said Little John, more sorrowfully than before. \"And a money-gorging usurer?\" \"Ay,\" said Little John in so sorrowful a voice that it might have drawn tears from the Dragon of Wentley. \"Alas, that these things should be!\" said jolly Robin, turning to the Bishop, \"for I have ever found Little John a truthful man.\" At this, a roar of laughter went up, whereat the blood rushed into the Bishop's face till it was cherry red from crown to chin; but he said nothing and only swallowed his words, though they well-nigh choked him. \"Nay, my Lord Bishop,\" said Robin, \"we are rough fellows, but I trust not such ill men as thou thinkest, after all. There is not a man here that would harm a hair of thy reverence's head. I know thou art galled by our jesting, but we are all equal here in the greenwood, for there are no bishops nor barons nor earls among us, but only men, so thou must share our life with us while thou dost abide here. Come, busk ye, my merry men, and get the feast ready. Meantime, we will show our guests our woodland sports.\" So, while some went to kindle the fires for roasting meats, others ran leaping to get their cudgels and longbows. Then Robin brought forward Sir Richard of the Lea. \"My Lord Bishop,\" said he, \"here is another guest that we have with us this day. I wish that thou mightest know him better, for I and all my men will strive to honor you both at this merrymaking.\" \"Speak out, Bishop,\" quoth Robin, laughing. \"We of Sherwood check not an easy flow of words. 'Den of thieves' thou west about to say.\" Quoth the Bishop, \"Mayhap that was what I meant to say, Sir Richard; but this I will say, that I saw thee just now laugh at the scurrilous jests of these fellows. It would have been more becoming of thee, methinks, to have checked them with frowns instead of spurring them on by laughter.\" \"I meant no harm to thee,\" said Sir Richard, \"but a merry jest is a merry jest, and I may truly say I would have laughed at it had it been against mine own self.\" \"I have a story to tell you all, so listen to what I have to say,\" quoth he; whereupon, without more ado, he told them all about Sir Richard, and how his lands were in pawn. But, as he went on, the Bishop's face, that had erst been smiling and ruddy with merriment, waxed serious, and he put aside the horn of wine he held in his hand, for he knew the story of Sir Richard, and his heart sank within him with grim forebodings. Then, when Robin Hood had done, he turned to the Bishop of Hereford. \"Now, my Lord Bishop,\" said he, \"dost thou not think this is ill done of anyone, much more of a churchman, who should live in humbleness and charity?\" To this the Bishop answered not a word but looked upon the ground with moody eyes. Quoth Robin, \"Now, thou art the richest bishop in all England; canst thou not help this needy brother?\" But still the Bishop answered not a word. \"Who hath the score of the goods?\" asked Robin Hood, looking at the Black Friars. Then up spake the smallest of all, in a trembling voice--an old man he was, with a gentle, wrinkled face. \"That have I; but, I pray thee, harm me not.\" \"Nay,\" quoth Robin, \"I have never harmed harmless man yet; but give it to me, good father.\" So the old man did as he was bidden, and handed Robin the tablet on which was marked down the account of the various packages upon the horses. This Robin handed to Will Scarlet, bidding him to read the same. So Will Scarlet, lifting his voice that all might hear, began: \"That we touch not,\" quoth Robin, \"for this Quentin is an honest fellow, who hath risen by his own thrift.\" So the bales of silk were laid aside unopened. \"Twoscore of great wax candles for the Chapel of Saint Thomas.\" At these words the Bishop shook as with a chill, and the box was set upon the ground. \"My Lord Bishop, hast thou the key of this box?\" asked Robin. The Bishop shook his head. Quoth Robin, \"Thou, Will Scarlet, thou, Allan a Dale, and thou, Little John, count it over.\" At this the Bishop looked up, but he could say never a word; yet he was thankful to keep some of his wealth. Then Sir Richard arose. \"I cannot stay later, good friends,\" said he, \"for my lady will wax anxious if I come not home; so I crave leave to depart.\" Then Robin Hood and all his merry men arose, and Robin said, \"We cannot let thee go hence unattended, Sir Richard.\" Then up spake Little John, \"Good master, let me choose a score of stout fellows from the band, and let us arm ourselves in a seemly manner and so serve as retainers to Sir Richard till he can get others in our stead.\" \"Thou hast spoken well, Little John, and it shall be done,\" said Robin. Then Robin Hood said, \"Thou hast spoken well, Will Scarlet, and it shall be done.\" Then up spake Will Stutely, \"Let us give him yon bale of rich velvet and yon roll of cloth of gold to take home to his noble lady wife as a present from Robin Hood and his merry men all.\" At this all clapped their hands for joy, and Robin said: \"Thou hast well spoken, Will Stutely, and it shall be done.\" Then up spake the Bishop of Hereford in a mournful voice, \"I, too, must be jogging, good fellow, for the night waxes late.\" But, as the Bishop rode away, he vowed within himself that he would sometime make Robin rue the day that he stopped him in Sherwood. But now we shall follow Sir Richard; so listen, and you shall hear what befell him, and how he paid his debts at Emmet Priory, and likewise in due season to Robin Hood. How Sir Richard of the Lea Paid His Debts THE LONG HIGHWAY stretched straight on, gray and dusty in the sun. On either side were dikes full of water bordered by osiers, and far away in the distance stood the towers of Emmet Priory with tall poplar trees around. Along the causeway rode a knight with a score of stout men-at-arms behind him. The Knight was clad in a plain, long robe of gray serge, gathered in at the waist with a broad leathern belt, from which hung a long dagger and a stout sword. But though he was so plainly dressed himself, the horse he rode was a noble barb, and its trappings were rich with silk and silver bells. The porter was drowsing on his bench within the lodge, but at the knock he roused himself and, opening the wicket, came hobbling forth and greeted the Knight, while a tame starling that hung in a wicker cage within piped out, \"_In coelo quies! In coelo quies!_\" such being the words that the poor old lame porter had taught him to speak. \"Where is thy prior?\" asked the Knight of the old porter. \"He is at meat, good knight, and he looketh for thy coming,\" quoth the porter, \"for, if I mistake not, thou art Sir Richard of the Lea.\" \"I am Sir Richard of the Lea; then I will go seek him forthwith,\" said the Knight. \"But shall I not send thy horse to stable?\" said the porter. \"By Our Lady, it is the noblest nag, and the best harnessed, that e'er I saw in all my life before.\" And he stroked the horse's flank with his palm. \"Nay,\" quoth Sir Richard, \"the stables of this place are not for me, so make way, I prythee.\" So saying, he pushed forward, and, the gates being opened, he entered the stony courtyard of the Priory, his men behind him. In they came with rattle of steel and clashing of swords, and ring of horses' feet on cobblestones, whereat a flock of pigeons that strutted in the sun flew with flapping wings to the high eaves of the round towers. While the Knight was riding along the causeway to Emmet, a merry feast was toward in the refectory there. The afternoon sun streamed in through the great arched windows and lay in broad squares of light upon the stone floor and across the board covered with a snowy linen cloth, whereon was spread a princely feast. At the head of the table sat Prior Vincent of Emmet all clad in soft robes of fine cloth and silk; on his head was a black velvet cap picked out with gold, and around his neck hung a heavy chain of gold, with a great locket pendant therefrom. Beside him, on the arm of his great chair, roosted his favorite falcon, for the Prior was fond of the gentle craft of hawking. On his right hand sat the Sheriff of Nottingham in rich robes of purple all trimmed about with fur, and on his left a famous doctor of law in dark and sober garb. Below these sat the high cellarer of Emmet, and others chief among the brethren. Jest and laughter passed around, and all was as merry as merry could be. The wizened face of the man of law was twisted into a wrinkled smile, for in his pouch were fourscore golden angels that the Prior had paid him in fee for the case betwixt him and Sir Richard of the Lea. The learned doctor had been paid beforehand, for he had not overmuch trust in the holy Vincent of Emmet. Quoth the Sheriff of Nottingham, \"But art thou sure, Sir Prior, that thou hast the lands so safe?\" \"Ay, marry,\" said Prior Vincent, smacking his lips after a deep draught of wine, \"I have kept a close watch upon him, albeit he was unawares of the same, and I know right well that he hath no money to pay me withal.\" \"Ay, true,\" said the man of law in a dry, husky voice, \"his land is surely forfeit if he cometh not to pay; but, Sir Prior, thou must get a release beneath his sign manual, or else thou canst not hope to hold the land without trouble from him.\" \"How now,\" broke in the Prior in a quivering voice, his eyes glistening and his cheeks red with anger, \"dost thou prate to my very beard, sirrah? By Saint Hubert, thou hadst best save thy breath to cool thy pottage, else it may scald thy mouth.\" \"Nay,\" said the man of law smoothly, \"I dare swear this same knight will never come to settlement this day, but will prove recreant. Nevertheless, we will seek some means to gain his lands from him, so never fear.\" So the brother arose and went and looked, and he said, \"I see below a score of stout men-at-arms and a knight just dismounting from his horse. He is dressed in long robes of gray which, methinks, are of poor seeming; but the horse he rideth upon hath the richest coursing that ever I saw. The Knight dismounts and they come this way, and are even now below in the great hall.\" \"Lo, see ye there now,\" quoth Prior Vincent. \"Here ye have a knight with so lean a purse as scarce to buy him a crust of bread to munch, yet he keeps a band of retainers and puts rich trappings upon his horse's hide, while his own back goeth bare. Is it not well that such men should be brought low?\" \"But art thou sure,\" said the little doctor tremulously, \"that this knight will do us no harm? Such as he are fierce when crossed, and he hath a band of naughty men at his heels. Mayhap thou hadst better give an extension of his debt.\" Thus he spake, for he was afraid Sir Richard might do him a harm. \"Thou needst not fear,\" said the Prior, looking down at the little man beside him. \"This knight is gentle and would as soon think of harming an old woman as thee.\" \"Now, thou art a shrewd debtor, I wot,\" said he. Then, \"Sir Sheriff, I drink to thee.\" But still the Knight kneeled upon the hard stones, so the Prior turned to him again. \"What wouldst thou have?\" quoth he sharply. At these words, a slow red mounted into the Knight's cheeks; but still he knelt. \"I would crave thy mercy,\" said he. \"As thou hopest for Heaven's mercy, show mercy to me. Strip me not of my lands and so reduce a true knight to poverty.\" \"Thy day is broken and thy lands forfeit,\" said the man of law, plucking up his spirits at the Knight's humble speech. Quoth Sir Richard, \"Thou man of law, wilt thou not befriend me in mine hour of need?\" \"Nay,\" said the other, \"I hold with this holy Prior, who hath paid me my fees in hard gold, so that I am bounder to him.\" \"Wilt thou not be my friend, Sir Sheriff?\" said Sir Richard. \"Nay, 'fore Heaven,\" quoth the Sheriff of Nottingham, \"this is no business of mine, yet I will do what I may,\" and he nudged the Prior beneath the cloth with his knee. \"Wilt thou not ease him of some of his debts, Sir Prior?\" \"Not another day,\" said the Prior sternly. \"And is this all thou wilt do for me?\" asked the Knight. \"Now, out upon thee, false knight!\" cried the Prior, bursting forth in anger. \"Either pay thy debt as I have said, or release thy land and get thee gone from out my hall.\" Then Sir Richard arose to his feet. \"Thou false, lying priest!\" said he in so stern a voice that the man of law shrunk affrighted, \"I am no false knight, as thou knowest full well, but have even held my place in the press and the tourney. Hast thou so little courtesy that thou wouldst see a true knight kneel for all this time, or see him come into thy hall and never offer him meat or drink?\" Then quoth the man of law in a trembling voice, \"This is surely an ill way to talk of matters appertaining to business; let us be mild in speech. What wilt thou pay this knight, Sir Prior, to give thee release of his land?\" \"Nay,\" cried the other shrilly, \"it is but my fee that thou didst pay me, and thou gettest it not back again.\" And he hugged his gown about him. \"Now, Sir Prior,\" quoth Sir Richard, \"I have held my day and paid all the dues demanded of me; so, as there is no more betwixt us, I leave this vile place straightway.\" So saying, he turned upon his heel and strode away. All this time the Sheriff had been staring with wide-open eyes and mouth agape at the tall man-at-arms, who stood as though carved out of stone. At last he gasped out, \"Reynold Greenleaf!\" At this, the tall man-at-arms, who was no other than Little John, turned, grinning, to the Sheriff. \"I give thee good den, fair gossip,\" quoth he. \"I would say, sweet Sheriff, that I have heard all thy pretty talk this day, and it shall be duly told unto Robin Hood. So, farewell for the nonce, till we meet again in Sherwood Forest.\" Then he, also, turned and followed Sir Richard down the hall, leaving the Sheriff, all pale and amazed, shrunk together upon his chair. A merry feast it was to which Sir Richard came, but a sorry lot he left behind him, and little hunger had they for the princely food spread before them. Only the learned doctor was happy, for he had his fee. Thus rode forth good Sir Richard of the Lea to pay his debt to Robin Hood this bright and merry morn. Along the highway they wended their way, with measured tramp of feet and rattle and jingle of sword and harness. Onward they marched till they came nigh to Denby, where, from the top of a hill, they saw, over beyond the town, many gay flags and streamers floating in the bright air. Then Sir Richard turned to the man-at-arms nearest to him. \"What is toward yonder at Denby today?\" quoth he. \"Please Your Worship,\" answered the man-at-arms, \"a merry fair is held there today, and a great wrestling match, to which many folk have come, for a prize hath been offered of a pipe of red wine, a fair golden ring, and a pair of gloves, all of which go to the best wrestler.\" \"Now, by my faith,\" quoth Sir Richard, who loved good manly sports right well, \"this will be a goodly thing to see. Methinks we have to stay a little while on our journey, and see this merry sport.\" So he turned his horse's head aside toward Denby and the fair, and thither he and his men made their way. There they found a great hubbub of merriment. Flags and streamers were floating, tumblers were tumbling on the green, bagpipes were playing, and lads and lasses were dancing to the music. But the crowd were gathered most of all around a ring where the wrestling was going forward, and thither Sir Richard and his men turned their steps. Now when the judges of the wrestling saw Sir Richard coming and knew who he was, the chief of them came down from the bench where he and the others sat, and went to the Knight and took him by the hand, beseeching him to come and sit with them and judge the sport. So Sir Richard got down from his horse and went with the others to the bench raised beside the ring. Now there had been great doings that morning, for a certain yeoman named Egbert, who came from Stoke over in Staffordshire, had thrown with ease all those that came against him; but a man of Denby, well known through all the countryside as William of the Scar, had been biding his time with the Stoke man; so, when Egbert had thrown everyone else, stout William leaped into the ring. Then a tough bout followed, and at last he threw Egbert heavily, whereat there was a great shouting and shaking of hands, for all the Denby men were proud of their wrestler. \"Nay,\" said the judge, \"he is a stranger to me.\" Meantime, without a word, the young man, laying aside his quarterstaff, began to take off his jerkin and body clothing until he presently stood with naked arms and body; and a comely sight he was when so bared to the view, for his muscles were cut round and smooth and sharp like swiftrunning water. Then up spoke Sir Richard gently. \"Nay,\" said he, \"the youth is right; if the other dieth, he dieth in the wrestling ring, where he took his chance, and was cast fairly enow.\" \"Now, I wonder who yon youth may be,\" said the judge, turning to Sir Richard, \"he seemeth like a stout Saxon from his red cheeks and fair hair. This William of ours is a stout man, too, and never have I seen him cast in the ring before, albeit he hath not yet striven with such great wrestlers as Thomas of Cornwall, Diccon of York, and young David of Doncaster. Hath he not a firm foot in the ring, thinkest thou, Sir Richard?\" \"Ay, truly, and yet this youth threw him fairly, and with wondrous ease. I much wonder who he can be.\" Thus said Sir Richard in a thoughtful voice. Meanwhile the young stranger had made his way through the crowd, but, as he passed, he heard all around him such words muttered as \"Look at the cockerel!\" \"Behold how he plumeth himself!\" \"I dare swear he cast good William unfairly!\" \"Yea, truly, saw ye not birdlime upon his hands?\" \"It would be well to cut his cock's comb!\" To all this the stranger paid no heed, but strode proudly about as though he heard it not. So he walked slowly across the green to where the booth stood wherein was dancing, and standing at the door he looked in on the sport. As he stood thus, a stone struck his arm of a sudden with a sharp jar, and, turning, he saw that an angry crowd of men had followed him from the wrestling ring. Then, when they saw him turn so, a great hooting and yelling arose from all, so that the folk came running out from the dancing booth to see what was to do. At last a tall, broad-shouldered, burly blacksmith strode forward from the crowd swinging a mighty blackthorn club in his hand. \"Wouldst thou come here to our fair town of Denby, thou Jack in the Box, to overcome a good honest lad with vile, juggling tricks?\" growled he in a deep voice like the bellow of an angry bull. \"Take that, then!\" And of a sudden he struck a blow at the youth that might have felled an ox. But the other turned the blow deftly aside, and gave back another so terrible that the Denby man went down with a groan, as though he had been smitten by lightning. When they saw their leader fall, the crowd gave another angry shout; but the stranger placed his back against the tent near which he stood, swinging his terrible staff, and so fell had been the blow that he struck the stout smith that none dared to come within the measure of his cudgel, so the press crowded back, like a pack of dogs from a bear at bay. But now some coward hand from behind threw a sharp jagged stone that smote the stranger on the crown, so that he staggered back, and the red blood gushed from the cut and ran down his face and over his jerkin. Then, seeing him dazed with this vile blow, the crowd rushed upon him, so that they overbore him and he fell beneath their feet. Now it might have gone ill with the youth, even to the losing of his young life, had not Sir Richard come to this fair; for of a sudden, shouts were heard, and steel flashed in the air, and blows were given with the flat of swords, while through the midst of the crowd Sir Richard of the Lea came spurring on his white horse. Then the crowd, seeing the steel-clad knight and the armed men, melted away like snow on the warm hearth, leaving the young man all bloody and dusty upon the ground. Finding himself free, the youth arose and, wiping the blood from his face, looked up. Quoth he, \"Sir Richard of the Lea, mayhap thou hast saved my life this day.\" \"Who art thou that knowest Sir Richard of the Lea so well?\" quoth the Knight. \"Methinks I have seen thy face before, young man.\" \"Yea, thou hast,\" said the youth, \"for men call me David of Doncaster.\" \"Ha!\" said Sir Richard, \"I wonder that I knew thee not, David; but thy beard hath grown longer, and thou thyself art more set in manhood since this day twelvemonth. Come hither into the tent, David, and wash the blood from thy face. And thou, Ralph, bring him straightway a clean jerkin. Now I am sorry for thee, yet I am right glad that I have had a chance to pay a part of my debt of kindness to thy good master Robin Hood, for it might have gone ill with thee had I not come, young man.\" So saying, the Knight led David into the tent, and there the youth washed the blood from his face and put on the clean jerkin. Then Sir Richard called aloud, \"Friends, this is David of Doncaster; so think it no shame that your Denby man was cast by such a wrestler. He beareth you no ill will for what hath passed, but let it be a warning to you how ye treat strangers henceforth. Had ye slain him it would have been an ill day for you, for Robin Hood would have harried your town as the kestrel harries the dovecote. I have bought the pipe of wine from him, and now I give it freely to you to drink as ye list. But never hereafterward fall upon a man for being a stout yeoman.\" At this all shouted amain; but in truth they thought more of the wine than of the Knight's words. Then Sir Richard, with David beside him and his men-at-arms around, turned about and left the fair. But in after days, when the men that saw that wrestling bout were bent with age, they would shake their heads when they heard of any stalwart game, and say, \"Ay, ay; but thou shouldst have seen the great David of Doncaster cast stout William of the Scar at Denby fair.\" Robin Hood stood in the merry greenwood with Little John and most of his stout yeomen around him, awaiting Sir Richard's coming. At last a glint of steel was seen through the brown forest leaves, and forth from the covert into the open rode Sir Richard at the head of his men. He came straight forward to Robin Hood and leaping from off his horse, clasped the yeoman in his arms. \"Why, how now,\" said Robin, after a time, holding Sir Richard off and looking at him from top to toe, \"methinks thou art a gayer bird than when I saw thee last.\" But Robin stopped him. \"Nay, Sir Richard,\" said he, \"think it not bold of me to cross thy bidding, but we of Sherwood do no business till after we have eaten and drunk.\" Whereupon, taking Sir Richard by the hand, he led him to the seat beneath the greenwood tree, while others of the chief men of the band came and seated themselves around. Then quoth Robin, \"How cometh it that I saw young David of Doncaster with thee and thy men, Sir Knight?\" Then straightway the Knight told all about his stay at Denby and of the happening at the fair, and how it was like to go hard with young David; so he told his tale, and quoth he, \"It was this, good Robin, that kept me so late on the way, otherwise I would have been here an hour agone.\" Then, when he had done speaking, Robin stretched out his hand and grasped the Knight's palm. Quoth he in a trembling voice, \"I owe thee a debt I can never hope to repay, Sir Richard, for let me tell thee, I would rather lose my right hand than have such ill befall young David of Doncaster as seemed like to come upon him at Denby.\" \"Sir Richard,\" quoth Robin, \"thou wilt pleasure us all if thou wilt keep that money as a gift from us of Sherwood. Is it not so, my lads?\" Then all shouted \"Ay\" with a mighty voice. \"I thank you all deeply,\" said the Knight earnestly, \"but think it not ill of me if I cannot take it. Gladly have I borrowed it from you, but it may not be that I can take it as a gift.\" Then Sir Richard had the packs laid upon the ground and opened, whereupon a great shout went up that made the forest ring again, for lo, there were tenscore bows of finest Spanish yew, all burnished till they shone again, and each bow inlaid with fanciful figures in silver, yet not inlaid so as to mar their strength. Beside these were tenscore quivers of leather embroidered with golden thread, and in each quiver were a score of shafts with burnished heads that shone like silver; each shaft was feathered with peacock's plumes, innocked with silver. Sir Richard gave to each yeoman a bow and a quiver of arrows, but to Robin he gave a stout bow inlaid with the cunningest workmanship in gold, while each arrow in his quiver was innocked with gold. Then all shouted again for joy of the fair gift, and all swore among themselves that they would die if need be for Sir Richard and his lady. At last the time came when Sir Richard must go, whereupon Robin Hood called his band around him, and each man of the yeomen took a torch in his hand to light the way through the woodlands. So they came to the edge of Sherwood, and there the Knight kissed Robin upon the cheeks and left him and was gone. Thus Robin Hood helped a noble knight out of his dire misfortunes, that else would have smothered the happiness from his life. Little John Turns Barefoot Friar COLD WINTER had passed and spring had come. No leafy thickness had yet clad the woodlands, but the budding leaves hung like a tender mist about the trees. In the open country the meadow lands lay a sheeny green, the cornfields a dark velvety color, for they were thick and soft with the growing blades. The plowboy shouted in the sun, and in the purple newturned furrows flocks of birds hunted for fat worms. All the broad moist earth smiled in the warm light, and each little green hill clapped its hand for joy. On a deer's hide, stretched on the ground in the open in front of the greenwood tree, sat Robin Hood basking in the sun like an old dog fox. Leaning back with his hands clasped about his knees, he lazily watched Little John rolling a stout bowstring from long strands of hempen thread, wetting the palms of his hands ever and anon, and rolling the cord upon his thigh. Near by sat Allan a Dale fitting a new string to his harp. Quoth Robin at last, \"Methinks I would rather roam this forest in the gentle springtime than be King of all merry England. What palace in the broad world is as fair as this sweet woodland just now, and what king in all the world hath such appetite for plover's eggs and lampreys as I for juicy venison and sparkling ale? Gaffer Swanthold speaks truly when he saith, 'Better a crust with content than honey with a sour heart.'\" \"Yea,\" quoth merry Robin, laughing, \"that was the night that Will Stutely must needs snatch a kiss from the stout hostess, and got a canakin of ale emptied over his head for his pains.\" \"Truly, it was the same,\" said Little John, laughing also. \"Methinks that was a goodly song that the strolling friar sang. Friar Tuck, thou hast a quick ear for a tune, dost thou not remember it?\" \"_In the blossoming hedge the robin cock sings, For the sun it is merry and bright, And he joyfully hops and he flutters his wings, For his heart is all full of delight. For the May bloometh fair, And there's little of care, And plenty to eat in the Maytime rare. When the flowers all die, Then off he will fly, To keep himself warm In some jolly old barn Where the snow and the wind neither chill him nor harm. \"And such is the life of the strolling friar, With aplenty to eat and to drink; For the goodwife will keep him a seat by the fire, And the pretty girls smile at his wink. Then he lustily trolls As he onward strolls, A rollicking song for the saving of souls. When the wind doth blow, With the coming of snow, There's a place by the fire For the fatherly friar, And a crab in the bowl for his heart's desire_.\" Thus Friar Tuck sang in a rich and mellow voice, rolling his head from side to side in time with the music, and when he had done, all clapped their hands and shouted with laughter, for the song fitted him well. \"In very sooth,\" quoth Little John, \"it is a goodly song, and, were I not a yeoman of Sherwood Forest, I had rather be a strolling friar than aught else in the world.\" \"Truly, for the honor of the cloth,\" quoth Friar Tuck, \"I hold with my good gossip, Little John.\" \"That fitteth my mind,\" quoth Little John, \"so let us forth, say I.\" Thereupon Little John and Friar Tuck went to the storehouse of the band, and there chose for the yeoman the robe of a Gray Friar. Then they came forth again, and a mighty roar of laughter went up, for not only had the band never seen Little John in such guise before, but the robe was too short for him by a good palm's-breadth. But Little John's hands were folded in his loose sleeves, and Little John's eyes were cast upon the ground, and at his girdle hung a great, long string of beads. Quoth jolly Robin, \"Take thou the road to Gainsborough, and I will take that to Blyth. So, fare thee well, holy father, and mayst thou not ha' cause to count thy beads in earnest ere we meet again.\" \"Good den, good beggar that is to be,\" quoth Little John, \"and mayst thou have no cause to beg for mercy ere I see thee next.\" \"Marry,\" quoth Little John to himself, as he strode along, \"yon was no such ill happening; Saint Dunstan send me more of the like.\" After he had trudged along for a time he began to wax thirsty again in the warmth of the day. He shook his leathern pottle beside his ear, but not a sound came therefrom. Then he placed it to his lips and tilted it high aloft, but not a drop was there. \"Little John! Little John!\" said he sadly to himself, shaking his head the while, \"woman will be thy ruin yet, if thou dost not take better care of thyself.\" \"I give you good den, sweet friends,\" quoth Little John, striding up to where they sat. \"Give thee good den, holy father,\" quoth the merry Beggar with a grin. \"But look thee, thy gown is too short. Thou hadst best cut a piece off the top and tack it to the bottom, so that it may be long enough. But come, sit beside us here and take a taste of ale, if thy vows forbid thee not.\" \"Nay,\" quoth Little John, also grinning, \"the blessed Saint Dunstan hath given me a free dispensation for all indulgence in that line.\" And he thrust his hand into his pouch for money to pay his score. \"Truly,\" quoth the Tinker, \"without thy looks belie thee, holy friar, the good Saint Dunstan was wise, for without such dispensation his votary is like to ha' many a penance to make. Nay, take thy hand from out thy pouch, brother, for thou shalt not pay this shot. Ho, landlord, a pot of ale!\" So the ale was brought and given to Little John. Then, blowing the froth a little way to make room for his lips, he tilted the bottom of the pot higher and higher, till it pointed to the sky, and he had to shut his eyes to keep the dazzle of the sunshine out of them. Then he took the pot away, for there was nothing in it, and heaved a full deep sigh, looking at the others with moist eyes and shaking his head solemnly. \"Talking of fatness,\" said the Peddler, \"thou thyself lookest none too ill-fed, holy friar.\" \"Nay, truly,\" said Little John, \"thou seest in me what the holy Saint Dunstan can do for them that serve him upon a handful of parched peas and a trickle of cold water.\" \"Why, as for that,\" quoth Little John, grinning, \"mayhap he hath lent me aid to learn a ditty or so.\" \"Then, prythee, let us hear how he hath taught thee,\" quoth the Tinker. \"_Ah, pretty, pretty maid, whither dost thou go? I prythee, prythee, wait for thy lover also, And we'll gather the rose As it sweetly blows, For the merry, merry winds are blo-o-o-wing_.\" \"Nay,\" quoth Little John, \"sin' I cannot tipple and sing, like Your Worship's reverence, in such a goodly place as Fountain Abbey, I must e'en tipple and sing where I can.\" \"Now, out upon thee,\" cried the tall lean Brother in a harsh voice, \"now, out upon thee, that thou shouldst so disgrace thy cloth by this talk and bearing.\" \"Nay, fellow,\" said the lean Brother harshly, for he saw that Little John made sport of them, \"we want none of thy company, so get thee gone.\" \"Alas,\" quoth Little John, \"I am truly sorry that ye like me not nor my company, but as for leaving you, it may not be, for my heart is so moved, that, willy-nilly, I must go with you for the sake of your holy company.\" \"Truly, I am grateful to thee for the thought of me,\" quoth Little John, \"but have no fear, brother; my limbs are stout, and I could run like a hare from here to Gainsborough.\" At these words a sound of laughing came from the bench, whereat the lean Brother's wrath boiled over, like water into the fire, with great fuss and noise. \"Now, out upon thee, thou naughty fellow!\" he cried. \"Art thou not ashamed to bring disgrace so upon our cloth? Bide thee here, thou sot, with these porkers. Thou art no fit company for us.\" \"La, ye there now!\" quoth Little John. \"Thou hearest, landlord; thou art not fit company for these holy men; go back to thine alehouse. Nay, if these most holy brothers of mine do but give me the word, I'll beat thy head with this stout staff till it is as soft as whipped eggs.\" \"Why truly, gossip,\" spoke up Little John, \"methinks it would be well to boil our pot a little faster, for the day is passing on. So it will not jolt thy fat too much, onward, say I.\" Little John looked over his shoulder, for they had now passed each other, and he called back, \"Big Jack, lean Jack and fat Jack-pudding.\" At this the fat Friar gave a groan and seemed as if he were like to fall from his saddle for shame; the other brother said nothing, but he looked before him with a grim and stony look. \"We have no money, fellow,\" said the lean Friar harshly. \"Come, Brother Thomas, let us forward.\" \"I tell thee, fellow, we have no money,\" thundered the fat little Friar with the great voice. \"Ha' ye, in holy truth, no money?\" asked Little John. \"Not a farthing,\" said the lean Friar sourly. \"Not a groat,\" said the fat Friar loudly. \"Nay,\" quoth Little John, \"this must not be. Far be it from me to see such holy men as ye are depart from me with no money. Get both of you down straightway from off your horses, and we will kneel here in the middle of the crossroads and pray the blessed Saint Dunstan to send us some money to carry us on our journey.\" \"What sayest thou, thou limb of evil!\" cried the lean Friar, fairly gnashing his teeth with rage. \"Doss thou bid me, the high cellarer of Fountain Abbey, to get down from my horse and kneel in the dirty road to pray to some beggarly Saxon saint?\" \"Now,\" quoth Little John, \"I ha' a great part of a mind to crack thy head for thee for speaking thus of the good Saint Dunstan! But get down straightway, for my patience will not last much longer, and I may forget that ye are both in holy orders.\" So saying, he twirled his stout staff till it whistled again. \"Now, brothers, down on your knees and pray,\" said Little John; thereupon, putting his heavy hands upon the shoulder of each, he forced them to their knees, he kneeling also. Then Little John began to beseech Saint Dunstan for money, which he did in a great loud voice. After he had so besought the Saint for a time, he bade the friars feel in their pouches and see if the Saint had sent them anything; so each put his hand slowly in the pouch that hung beside him, but brought nothing thence. \"Have ye nothing?\" quoth Little John. \"Nay, I warrant there is somewhat that hath crept into the seams of your pouches, and so ye ha' missed it. Let me look.\" But Little John turned his footsteps back again to Sherwood Forest, and merrily he whistled as he strode along. And now we will see what befell Robin Hood in his venture as beggar. Robin Hood Turns Beggar \"Halloa, good fellow,\" quoth Robin, when he had come nigh to the other, \"what art thou doing here this merry day, when the flowers are peeping and the buds are swelling?\" \"_I sit upon the stile, And I sing a little while As I wait for my own true dear, O, For the sun is shining bright, And the leaves are dancing light, And the little fowl sings she is near, O_. \"And so it is with me, bully boy, saving that my doxy cometh not.\" \"Sayst thou so?\" quoth the Beggar. \"Marry, I make no such serious thoughts upon the matter. I eat when I can get it, and munch my crust when I can get no crumb; likewise, when there is no ale to be had I wash the dust from out my throat with a trickle of cold water. I was sitting here, as thou camest upon me, bethinking myself whether I should break my fast or no. I do love to let my hunger grow mightily keen ere I eat, for then a dry crust is as good to me as a venison pasty with suet and raisins is to stout King Harry. I have a sharp hunger upon me now, but methinks in a short while it will ripen to a right mellow appetite.\" \"Now, in good sooth,\" quoth merry Robin, laughing, \"thou hast a quaint tongue betwixt thy teeth. But hast thou truly nought but a dry crust about thee? Methinks thy bags and pouches are fat and lusty for such thin fare.\" \"Why, mayhap there is some other cold fare therein,\" said the Beggar slyly. \"And hast thou nought to drink but cold water?\" said Robin. At this Robin laughed aloud. \"Marry,\" quoth he, \"they did ill toward thee for thy kindness. But tell me truly, what hast thou in thy pouches?\" \"Peace, good friend!\" cried Robin, holding up his hand. \"Thou makest my poor stomach quake with joy for what thou tellest me so sweetly. If thou wilt give me to eat, I will straightway hie me to that little inn thou didst tell of but now, and will bring a skin of ale for thy drinking and mine.\" So Robin straightway left the Beggar, who, upon his part, went to a budding lime bush back of the hedge, and there spread his feast upon the grass and roasted his eggs upon a little fagot fire, with a deftness gained by long labor in that line. After a while back came Robin bearing a goodly skin of ale upon his shoulder, which he laid upon the grass. Then, looking upon the feast spread upon the ground--and a fair sight it was to look upon--he slowly rubbed his hand over his stomach, for to his hungry eyes it seemed the fairest sight that he had beheld in all his life. \"Friend,\" said the Beggar, \"let me feel the weight of that skin. \"Yea, truly,\" quoth Robin, \"help thyself, sweet chuck, and meantime let me see whether thy pigeon pie is fresh or no.\" At last, after a long time had passed thus, Robin pushed the food from him and heaved a great sigh of deep content, for he felt as though he had been made all over anew. \"How!\" said the Beggar reproachfully, \"thou wouldst surely not talk of things appertaining to serious affairs upon such ale as this!\" \"Nay,\" quoth Robin, laughing. \"I would not check thy thirst, sweet friend; drink while I talk to thee. Thus it is: I would have thee know that I have taken a liking to thy craft and would fain have a taste of a beggar's life mine own self.\" \"Mayhap that may be so,\" quoth Robin, \"for I bring to mind that Gaffer Swanthold sayeth Jack Shoemaker maketh ill bread; Tom Baker maketh ill shoon. Nevertheless, I have a mind to taste a beggar's life, and need but the clothing to be as good as any.\" \"Now, fellow,\" said Robin, \"it would ill suit me to spoil thy pretty head for thee, but I tell thee plainly, that but for this feast I would do that to thee would stop thy traveling the country for many a day to come. Keep thy lips shut, lad, or thy luck will tumble out of thy mouth with thy speech!\" \"Now out, and alas for thee, man, for thou hast bred thyself ill this day!\" cried the Beggar, rising and taking up his staff. \"Take up thy club and defend thyself, fellow, for I will not only beat thee but I will take from thee thy money and leave thee not so much as a clipped groat to buy thyself a lump of goose grease to rub thy cracked crown withal. So defend thyself, I say.\" Then up leaped merry Robin and snatched up his staff also. \"Take my money, if thou canst,\" quoth he. \"I promise freely to give thee every farthing if thou dost touch me.\" And he twirled his staff in his fingers till it whistled again. \"How now!\" quoth merry Robin, laughing. \"Wilt thou have my hide or my money, sweet chuck?\" But to this the other answered never a word. Then Robin, seeing his plight, and that he was stunned with the blow, ran, still laughing, and brought the skin of ale and poured some of it on the Beggar's head and some down his throat, so that presently he opened his eyes and looked around as though wondering why he lay upon his back. \"I promise on the word of a true yeoman,\" quoth Robin, thinking that the fellow had a few pennies that he would save. \"Marry,\" quoth Robin, laughing, \"thou art a sly fellow, and I tell thee truly, had I known thou hadst so much money by thee maybe thou mightst not have carried it away, for I warrant thou didst not come honestly by it.\" So he turned and left Robin and, crossing the stile, was gone, but Robin heard him singing from beyond the hedge as he strode away: \"_For Polly is smiling and Molly is glad When the beggar comes in at the door, And Jack and Dick call him a fine lusty lad, And the hostess runs up a great score. Then hey, Willy Waddykin, Stay, Billy Waddykin, And let the brown ale flow free, flow free, The beggar's the man for me_.\" \"Marry,\" quoth Robin, laughing, and weighing the flask in his hands ere he drank, \"methinks it is no more than seemly of you all to be glad to see me, seeing that I bring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, and such a lusty leg to a lame man. I drink to your happiness, brothers, as I may not drink to your health, seeing ye are already hale, wind and limb.\" At this all grinned, and the Blind beggar, who was the chief man among them, and was the broadest shouldered and most lusty rascal of all, smote Robin upon the shoulder, swearing he was a right merry wag. \"Whence comest thou, lad?\" asked the Dumb man. \"Why,\" quoth Robin, \"I came this morning from sleeping overnight in Sherwood.\" \"Methinks he would, too,\" quoth Robin, laughing. \"But what money is this that ye speak of?\" \"Stay, brother Hodge,\" quoth the Blind man, breaking into the talk, \"I would not doubt our brother here, but bear in mind we know him not. What art thou, brother? Upright-man, Jurkman, Clapper-dudgeon, Dommerer, or Abraham-man?\" At this the others bore back and stood at a little distance scowling upon Robin. \"Come on, ye scum!\" cried he merrily. \"Here be cakes and ale for all. Now, who will be next served?\" So, after a while, the Corn Engrosser came riding up to where Robin sat; whereupon merry Robin stepped straightway forth, in all his rags and tatters, his bags and pouches dangling about him, and laid his hand upon the horse's bridle rein, calling upon the other to stop. \"Who art thou, fellow, that doth dare to stop me thus upon the King's highway?\" said the lean man, in a dry, sour voice. \"Pity a poor beggar,\" quoth Robin. \"Give me but a farthing to buy me a piece of bread.\" \"Now, out upon thee!\" snarled the other. \"Such sturdy rogues as thou art are better safe in the prisons or dancing upon nothing, with a hempen collar about the neck, than strolling the highways so freely.\" \"Doss thou prate so to me, sirrah?\" cried the Corn Engrosser in a rage. \"Now I will have thee soundly whipped if ever I catch thee in any town where the law can lay hold of thee! As for giving thee a penny, I swear to thee that I have not so much as a single groat in my purse. Were Robin Hood himself to take me, he might search me from crown to heel without finding the smallest piece of money upon me. I trust I am too sly to travel so nigh to Sherwood with money in my pouch, and that thief at large in the woods.\" \"Put up thy money, lad,\" cried the other quickly. \"Art thou a fool, to trust to beggar's rags to shield thee from Robin Hood? If he caught thee, he would strip thee to the skin, for he hates a lusty beggar as he doth a fat priest or those of my kind.\" \"Is it indeed so?\" quoth Robin. \"Had I known this, mayhap I had not come hereabouts in this garb. But I must go forward now, as much depends upon my journeying. Where goest thou, friend?\" \"I go to Grantham,\" said the Corn Engrosser, \"but I shall lodge tonight at Newark, if I can get so far upon my way.\" \"Why, as thou art an honest fellow and a rich fellow,\" said the Corn Engrosser, \"I mind not thy company; but, in sooth, I have no great fondness for beggars.\" \"Alas!\" quoth Robin, \"I would that I had as little money by me as thou hast, for this day I fear that Robin Hood will get every groat of my wealth.\" Then the other looked at Robin and winked cunningly. Quoth he, \"I tell thee, friend, that I have nigh as much by me as thou hast, but it is hidden so that never a knave in Sherwood could find it.\" \"Now, as thou art so honest a fellow, and, withal, so much younger than I am, I will tell thee that which I have told to no man in all the world before, and thus thou mayst learn never again to do such a foolish thing as to trust to beggar's garb to guard thee against Robin Hood. Seest thou these clogs upon my feet?\" \"Yea,\" quoth Robin, laughing, \"truly, they are large enough for any man to see, even were his sight as foggy as that of Peter Patter, who never could see when it was time to go to work.\" All this time the Corn Engrosser had been staring at Robin, his mouth agape with wonder. \"Art thou mad,\" quoth he, \"to talk in this way, so loud and in such a place? Let us forward, and save thy mirth till we are safe and sound at Newark.\" At these words the corn factor grew pale as a linen napkin. \"Who art thou that talkest so?\" said he. Then merry Robin laughed again, and quoth he, \"Men hereabouts call me Robin Hood; so, sweet friend, thou hadst best do my bidding and give me thy shoes, wherefore hasten, I prythee, or else thou wilt not get to fair Newark Town till after dark.\" At the sound of the name of Robin Hood, the corn factor quaked with fear, so that he had to seize his horse by the mane to save himself from falling off its back. Then straightway, and without more words, he stripped off his clogs and let them fall upon the road. Robin, still holding the bridle rein, stooped and picked them up. Then he said, \"Sweet friend, I am used to ask those that I have dealings with to come and feast at Sherwood with me. I will not ask thee, because of our pleasant journey together; for I tell thee there be those in Sherwood that would not be so gentle with thee as I have been. The name of Corn Engrosser leaves a nasty taste upon the tongue of all honest men. Take a fool's advice of me and come no more so nigh to Sherwood, or mayhap some day thou mayst of a sudden find a clothyard shaft betwixt thy ribs. So, with this, I give thee good den.\" Hereupon he clapped his hand to the horse's flank and off went nag and rider. But the man's face was all bedewed with the sweat of fright, and never again, I wot, was he found so close to Sherwood Forest as he had been this day. Robin stood and looked after him, and, when he was fairly gone, turned, laughing, and entered the forest carrying the shoes in his hand. That night in sweet Sherwood the red fires glowed brightly in wavering light on tree and bush, and all around sat or lay the stout fellows of the band to hear Robin Hood and Little John tell their adventures. All listened closely, and again and again the woods rang with shouts of laughter. So some of the band held with Robin Hood and some with Little John. As for me, I think--But I leave it with you to say for yourselves which you hold with. Robin Hood Shoots Before Queen Eleanor THE HIGHROAD stretched white and dusty in the hot summer afternoon sun, and the trees stood motionless along the roadside. All across the meadow lands the hot air danced and quivered, and in the limpid waters of the lowland brook, spanned by a little stone bridge, the fish hung motionless above the yellow gravel, and the dragonfly sat quite still, perched upon the sharp tip of a spike of the rushes, with its wings glistening in the sun. The landlord came and brought a pottle of wine and a long narrow glass upon a salver, which he held up to the Page as he sat upon his horse. Young Partington poured forth the bright yellow wine and holding the glass aloft, cried, \"Here is to the health and long happiness of my royal mistress, the noble Queen Eleanor; and may my journey and her desirings soon have end, and I find a certain stout yeoman men call Robin Hood.\" \"An thou knowest aught of him, good fellow,\" said young Partington, \"thou wilt do great service to him and great pleasure to our royal Queen by aiding me to find him.\" Then up spake the other yeoman, who was a handsome fellow with sunburned face and nut-brown, curling hair, \"Thou hast an honest look, Sir Page, and our Queen is kind and true to all stout yeomen. Methinks I and my friend here might safely guide thee to Robin Hood, for we know where he may be found. Yet I tell thee plainly, we would not for all merry England have aught of harm befall him.\" \"Set thy mind at ease; I bring nought of ill with me,\" quoth Richard Partington. \"I bring a kind message to him from our Queen, therefore an ye know where he is to be found, I pray you to guide me thither.\" Then Partington paid his score, and the yeomen coming forward, they all straightway departed upon their way. Then Robin Hood bowed his head and taking the ring, kissed it right loyally, and then slipped it upon his little finger. Quoth he, \"Sooner would I lose my life than this ring; and ere it departs from me, my hand shall be cold in death or stricken off at the wrist. Fair Sir Page, I will do our Queen's bidding, and will presently hie with thee to London; but, ere we go, I will feast thee here in the woodlands with the very best we have.\" \"It may not be,\" said the Page; \"we have no time to tarry, therefore get thyself ready straightway; and if there be any of thy band that thou wouldst take with thee, our Queen bids me say that she will make them right welcome likewise.\" That night they took up their inn in Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire, and the next night they lodged at Kettering, in Northamptonshire; and the next at Bedford Town; and the next at St. Albans, in Hertfordshire. This place they left not long after the middle of the night, and traveling fast through the tender dawning of the summer day, when the dews lay shining on the meadows and faint mists hung in the dales, when the birds sang their sweetest and the cobwebs beneath the hedges glimmered like fairy cloth of silver, they came at last to the towers and walls of famous London Town, while the morn was still young and all golden toward the east. Thus Robin Hood and Little John and Will Scarlet and Allan a Dale came before the Queen into her own royal bower. Then Robin kneeled before the Queen with his hands folded upon his breast, saying in simple phrase, \"Here am I, Robin Hood. Thou didst bid me come, and lo, I do thy bidding. I give myself to thee as thy true servant, and will do thy commanding, even if it be to the shedding of the last drop of my life's blood.\" \"_Gentle river, gentle river, Bright thy crystal waters flow, Sliding where the aspens shiver, Gliding where the lilies blow, \"Singing over pebbled shallows, Kissing blossoms bending low, Breaking 'neath the dipping swallows, Purpling where the breezes blow. \"Floating on thy breast forever Down thy current I could glide; Grief and pain should reach me never On thy bright and gentle tide. \"So my aching heart seeks thine, love, There to find its rest and peace, For, through loving, bliss is mine, love, And my many troubles cease_.\" Thus Allan sang, and as he sang all eyes dwelled upon him and not a sound broke the stillness, and even after he had done the silence hung for a short space. So the time passed till the hour drew nigh for the holding of the great archery match in Finsbury Fields. When all was quiet a bugle sounded, and straightway the archers came marching in order from their tents. Fortyscore they were in all, as stalwart a band of yeomen as could be found in all the wide world. So they came in orderly fashion and stood in front of the dais where King Henry and his Queen sat. King Henry looked up and down their ranks right proudly, for his heart warmed within him at the sight of such a gallant band of yeomen. Then he bade his herald Sir Hugh de Mowbray stand forth and proclaim the rules governing the game. So Sir Hugh stepped to the edge of the platform and spoke in a loud clear voice, and thus he said: So Sir Hugh spoke, and when he had done all the archers waved their bows aloft and shouted. Then each band turned and marched in order back to its place. Then while the deep buzz and hum of talking sounded all around like the noise of the wind in the leafy forest, Queen Eleanor turned to the King, and quoth she, \"Thinkest thou that these yeomen so chosen are the very best archers in all merry England?\" \"Yea, truly,\" said the King, smiling, for he was well pleased with the sport that he had seen; \"and I tell thee, that not only are they the best archers in all merry England, but in all the wide world beside.\" \"Why, in sooth,\" said Queen Eleanor, laughing, \"I know nought of such matters, but if thou hast a mind to do somewhat in that way, I will strive to pleasure thee. What wilt thou wager upon thy men?\" \"Methinks the thought of thy gold weigheth more heavily with thee than the wrong to thy cloth,\" said the Queen, smiling, and at this a ripple of laughter went around, for everyone knew how fond the Bishop was of his money. Then the Queen turned to a knight who stood near, whose name was Sir Robert Lee. \"Wilt thou back me in this manner?\" said she. \"Thou art surely rich enough to risk so much for the sake of a lady.\" \"To pleasure my Queen I will do it,\" said Sir Robert Lee, \"but for the sake of no other in all the world would I wager a groat, for no man can stand against Tepus and Gilbert and Clifton.\" Then turning to the King, Queen Eleanor said, \"I want no such aid as Sir Robert giveth me; but against thy wine and beer and stout bows of yew I wager this girdle all set with jewels from around my waist; and surely that is worth more than thine.\" \"Now, I take thy wager,\" quoth the King. \"Send for thy archers straightway. But here come forth the others; let them shoot, and then I will match those that win against all the world.\" \"Yea,\" quoth Robin Hood, to whom she spake, \"I will do my best for thy sake, and, if I fail, I make my vow never to finger bowstring more.\" Now, although Little John had been somewhat abashed in the Queen's bower, he felt himself the sturdy fellow he was when the soles of his feet pressed green grass again; so he said boldly, \"Now, blessings on thy sweet face, say I. An there lived a man that would not do his best for thee--I will say nought, only I would like to have the cracking of his knave's pate! \"Peace, Little John!\" said Robin Hood hastily, in a low voice; but good Queen Eleanor laughed aloud, and a ripple of merriment sounded all over the booth. The Bishop of Hereford did not laugh, neither did the King, but he turned to the Queen, and quoth he, \"Who are these men that thou hast brought before us?\" Then up spoke the Bishop hastily, for he could hold his peace no longer: \"Your Majesty,\" quoth he, \"yon fellow in blue is a certain outlawed thief of the mid-country, named Robin Hood; yon tall, strapping villain goeth by the name of Little John; the other fellow in green is a certain backsliding gentleman, known as Will Scarlet; the man in red is a rogue of a northern minstrel, named Allan a Dale.\" At this speech the King's brows drew together blackly, and he turned to the Queen. \"Is this true?\" said he sternly. Merry Robin laughed, and quoth he, \"Thou wilt have an ill time bettering that round, Will, for it is thy turn next. Brace thy thews, lad, and bring not shame upon Sherwood.\" Quoth the King grimly, to the Queen, \"If thy archers shoot no better than that, thou art like to lose thy wager, lady.\" But Queen Eleanor smiled, for she looked for better things from Robin Hood and Little John. \"By my soul!\" cried Gilbert. \"Art thou the devil in blue, to shoot in that wise?\" \"With all my heart,\" quoth merry Robin, \"I will shoot from this time till tomorrow day if it can pleasure my most gracious lord and King. Take thy place, Gilbert lad, and shoot.\" Then the King arose from his place, and not a word said he, but he looked around with a baleful look, and it would have been an ill day for anyone that he saw with a joyous or a merry look upon his face. Then he and his Queen and all the court left the place, but the King's heart was brimming full of wrath. After the King had gone, all the yeomen of the archer guard came crowding around Robin, and Little John, and Will, and Allan, to snatch a look at these famous fellows from the mid-country; and with them came many that had been onlookers at the sport, for the same purpose. Thus it happened presently that the yeomen, to whom Gilbert stood talking, were all surrounded by a crowd of people that formed a ring about them. At this all shouted aloud, for it pleased them to hear Robin speak so of them. At this another great shout went up, and many tossed their caps aloft, and swore among themselves that no better fellows ever walked the sod than Robin Hood and his stout yeomen. The Chase of Robin Hood Then the Bishop spoke again, in his soft, smooth voice: At these words the King tapped his fingertips upon the table beside him with vexation. \"What wouldst thou have me do, Bishop?\" quoth he. \"Didst thou not hear me pledge my word to the Queen? Thy talk is as barren as the wind from the bellows upon dead coals.\" \"In sooth, good master,\" quoth Little John, \"thy bidding and my doing ever fit together like cakes and ale. Let us in, I say also.\" Then up spake Will Scarlet: \"I am ever ready to do what thou sayest, uncle, yet I could wish that we were farther upon our way ere we rest for the night. Nevertheless, if thou thinkest best, let us in for the night, say I also.\" When Robin came out of the inn, he found young Richard Partington sitting upon his horse in the white moonlight, awaiting his coming. \"What news bearest thou, Sir Page?\" said Robin. \"I trust that it is not of an ill nature.\" \"Methought that they were naughty fellows,\" said the host, when he heard whom the men-at-arms sought. \"But I heard that blue-clad knave say that they would go straight forward to Saint Albans; so, an ye hurry forward, ye may, perchance, catch them on the highroad betwixt here and there.\" For this news the leader of the band thanked mine host right heartily, and, calling his men together, mounted and set forth again, galloping forward to Saint Albans upon a wild goose chase. For Robin was not as lucky in getting back as his men had been, as you shall presently hear. \"Halloa, good friend,\" quoth Robin, from beneath the hedge, when the other had gotten nigh enough, \"whither away so merrily this bright day?\" At these words the Cobbler's eyes opened big and wide, and his mouth grew round with wonder, like a knothole in a board fence. \"Slack-a-day,\" quoth he, \"look ye, now! I ha' never seen those same golden birds. And dost thou in sooth find them in these hedges, good fellow? Prythee, tell me, are there many of them? I would fain find them mine own self.\" \"Ay, truly,\" quoth Robin, \"they are as thick here as fresh herring in Cannock Chase.\" \"Look ye, now!\" said the Cobbler, all drowned in wonder. \"And dost thou in sooth catch them by dropping salt on their pretty tails?\" \"Nay, thou dost jest with me,\" said the Cobbler, \"for my clothes are coarse and patched, and thine are of fine stuff and very pretty.\" \"_Of all the joys, the best I love, Sing hey my frisking Nan, O, And that which most my soul doth move, It is the clinking can, O. Robin also gaped and stared in a wondering way, just as the Cobbler would have done in his place. \"Alack-a-daisy, me,\" quoth he. \"I know not whether I be sitting here or in No-man's-land! What meaneth all this stir i' th' pot, dear good gentlemen? Surely this is a sweet, honest fellow.\" \"Alas!\" quoth Robin Hood, \"look ye there, now! See how your illtreatment hath curdled the wits of this poor lad and turned them all sour! I, myself, am Quince, the Cobbler of Derby Town.\" \"Is it so?\" said Quince. \"Then, indeed, I am somebody else, and can be none other than Robin Hood. Take me, fellows; but let me tell you that ye ha' laid hand upon the stoutest yeoman that ever trod the woodlands.\" So Robin went with Sir Richard of the Lea, and did as he said, for he saw the wisdom of that which the knight advised, and that this was his only chance of safety. \"Why, how now, Robin!\" cried she, \"dost thou dare to come into the very jaws of the raging lion? Alas, poor fellow! Thou art lost indeed if the King finds thee here. Dost thou not know that he is seeking thee through all the land?\" \"Yea,\" quoth Robin, \"I do know right well that the King seeks me, and therefore I have come; for, surely, no ill can befall me when he hath pledged his royal word to Your Majesty for my safety. Moreover, I know Your Majesty's kindness and gentleness of heart, and so I lay my life freely in your gracious hands.\" Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne Great changes had fallen in this time; for King Henry had died and King Richard had come to the crown that fitted him so well through many hard trials, and through adventures as stirring as any that ever befell Robin Hood. But though great changes came, they did not reach to Sherwood's shades, for there Robin Hood and his men dwelled as merrily as they had ever done, with hunting and feasting and singing and blithe woodland sports; for it was little the outside striving of the world troubled them. The dawning of a summer's day was fresh and bright, and the birds sang sweetly in a great tumult of sound. So loud was their singing that it awakened Robin Hood where he lay sleeping, so that he stirred, and turned, and arose. Up rose Little John also, and all the merry men; then, after they had broken their fast, they set forth hither and thither upon the doings of the day. \"I like thy plan,\" quoth Robin, \"therefore we will part here. But look thee, Little John, keep thyself out of mischief, for I would not have ill befall thee for all the world.\" \"Marry, come up,\" quoth Little John, \"how thou talkest! Methinks thou art wont to get thyself into tighter coils than I am like to do.\" \"Halloa, friend,\" cried Robin, coming forward at last, \"who art thou that sittest there? And what is that that thou hast upon thy body? I make my vow I ha' never seen such a sight in all my life before. Had I done an evil thing, or did my conscience trouble me, I would be afraid of thee, thinking that thou wast someone from down below bringing a message bidding me come straightway to King Nicholas.\" \"Who art thou, rascal?\" said he at last, in a loud, harsh voice. \"Tut, tut,\" quoth merry Robin, \"speak not so sourly, brother. Hast thou fed upon vinegar and nettles this morning that thy speech is so stinging?\" \"An thou likest not my words,\" said the other fiercely, \"thou hadst best be jogging, for I tell thee plainly, my deeds match them.\" \"Nay, but I do like thy words, thou sweet, pretty thing,\" quoth Robin, squatting down upon the grass in front of the other. \"Moreover, I tell thee thy speech is witty and gamesome as any I ever heard in all my life.\" \"Why, truly, some folk do call him a great archer,\" said Robin Hood, \"but we of Nottinghamshire are famous hands with the longbow. Even I, though but a simple hand at the craft, would not fear to try a bout with thee.\" At these words Guy of Gisbourne looked upon Robin with wondering eyes, and then gave another roar of laughter till the woods rang. \"Now,\" quoth he, \"thou art a bold fellow to talk to me in this way. I like thy spirit in so speaking up to me, for few men have dared to do so. Put up a garland, lad, and I will try a bout with thee.\" Then Guy of Gisbourne arose. \"Now out upon it!\" cried he. \"The Devil himself could not hit such a mark as that.\" \"Mayhap he could and mayhap he could not,\" quoth merry Robin, \"but that we shall never know till thou hast shot thereat.\" At these words Guy of Gisbourne glared savagely upon Robin. Quoth he, \"Thou hast a merry tongue, thou villain; but take care that thou makest not too free with it, or I may cut it out from thy throat for thee.\" For a time Guy of Gisbourne stared upon Robin as though bereft of wits; but his wonder quickly passed to a wild rage. \"Art thou indeed Robin Hood?\" cried he. \"Now I am glad to meet thee, thou poor wretch! Shrive thyself, for thou wilt have no time for shriving when I am done with thee.\" So saying, he also drew his sword. And now let us see what befell Little John while these things were happening. Little John walked on his way through the forest paths until he had come to the outskirts of the woodlands, where, here and there, fields of barley, corn, or green meadow lands lay smiling in the sun. So he came to the highroad and to where a little thatched cottage stood back of a cluster of twisted crab trees, with flowers in front of it. Here he stopped of a sudden, for he thought that he heard the sound of someone in sorrow. He listened, and found that it came from the cottage; so, turning his footsteps thither, he pushed open the wicket and entered the place. There he saw a gray-haired dame sitting beside a cold hearthstone, rocking herself to and fro and weeping bitterly. \"Please Your Worship,\" said Little John, in a cracked voice like that of an old man, \"my name is Giles Hobble, at Your Worship's service.\" \"Ay, marry,\" quoth Little John, \"for money is not so plenty with me that I should cast sixpence away an I could earn it by an honest turn. What is it Your Worship would have me do?\" \"In sooth,\" said Little John, still in the old man's voice, \"I ha' never done such a thing before; but an a sixpence is to be earned so easily I might as well ha' it as anybody. But, Your Worship, are these naughty fellows shrived?\" \"Nay,\" said the Sheriff, laughing, \"never a whit; but thou mayst turn thy hand to that also if thou art so minded. But hasten, I prythee, for I would get back to mine inn betimes.\" Then Little John turned to the Sheriff. \"Please Your Worship,\" said he, \"will you give me leave to string my bow? For I would fain help these fellows along the way, when they are swinging, with an arrow beneath the ribs.\" \"With all my heart,\" said the Sheriff, \"only, as I said before, make thou haste in thy doings.\" At these words the Sheriff's men stood as still as stocks, for they knew right well that Little John would be as good as his word, and that to disobey him meant death. In vain the Sheriff roared at them, calling them cowards, and urging them forward in a body; they would not budge an inch, but stood and watched Little John as he moved slowly away toward the forest, keeping his gaze fixed upon them. But when the Sheriff saw his enemy thus slipping betwixt his fingers he grew mad with his rage, so that his head swam and he knew not what he did. Then of a sudden he turned his horse's head, and plunging his spurs into its sides he gave a great shout, and, rising in his stirrups, came down upon Little John like the wind. Then Little John raised his deadly bow and drew the gray goose feather to his cheek. But alas for him! For, ere he could loose the shaft, the good bow that had served him so long, split in his hands, and the arrow fell harmless at his feet. Seeing what had happened, the Sheriff's men raised a shout, and, following their master, came rushing down upon Little John. But the Sheriff was ahead of the others, and so caught up with the yeoman before he reached the shelter of the woodlands, then leaning forward he struck a mighty blow. Little John ducked and the Sheriff's sword turned in his hand, but the flat of the blade struck the other upon the head and smote him down, stunned and senseless. When Little John heard this speech he looked up, and straightway his heart crumbled away within him, for not only were the man's garments all covered with blood, but he wore Robin Hood's bugle horn and carried his bow and broadsword. \"How now!\" cried the Sheriff, when Robin Hood, in Guy of Gisbourne's clothes, had come nigh to them. \"What luck hath befallen thee in the forest? Why, man, thy clothes are all over blood!\" But the Sheriff of Nottingham clapped his hands for joy. \"Now, Guy of Gisbourne,\" cried he, \"if what thou tellest me is true, it will be the best day's doings for thee that ever thou hast done in all thy life.\" \"What I have told thee is sooth, and I lie not,\" said Robin, still in Guy of Gisbourne's voice. \"Look, is not this Robin Hood's sword, and is not this his good bow of yew, and is not this his bugle horn? Thinkest thou he would have given them to Guy of Gisbourne of his own free will?\" Then the Sheriff laughed aloud for joy. \"This is a good day!\" cried he. \"The great outlaw dead and his right-hand man in my hands! Ask what thou wilt of me, Guy of Gisbourne, and it is thine!\" \"Then this I ask of thee,\" said Robin. \"As I have slain the master I would now kill the man. Give this fellow's life into my hands, Sir Sheriff.\" \"Now thou art a fool!\" cried the Sheriff. \"Thou mightst have had money enough for a knight's ransom if thou hadst asked for it. I like ill to let this fellow pass from my hands, but as I have promised, thou shalt have him.\" \"I thank thee right heartily for thy gift,\" cried Robin. \"Take the rogue down from the horse, men, and lean him against yonder tree, while I show you how we stick a porker whence I come!\" At these words some of the Sheriff's men shook their heads; for, though they cared not a whit whether Little John were hanged or not, they hated to see him butchered in cold blood. But the Sheriff called to them in a loud voice, ordering them to take the yeoman down from the horse and lean him against the tree, as the other bade. \"Come!\" cried Little John. \"Here is my breast. It is meet that the same hand that slew my dear master should butcher me also! I know thee, Guy of Gisbourne!\" King Richard Comes to Sherwood Forest And now came more bustle than ever; a great running hither and thither, a rapping of hammers and a babble of voices sounded everywhere through the place, for the folk were building great arches across the streets, beneath which the King was to pass, and were draping these arches with silken banners and streamers of many colors. Great hubbub was going on in the Guild Hall of the town, also, for here a grand banquet was to be given to the King and the nobles of his train, and the best master carpenters were busy building a throne where the King and the Sheriff were to sit at the head of the table, side by side. It seemed to many of the good folk of the place as if the day that should bring the King into the town would never come; but all the same it did come in its own season, and bright shone the sun down into the stony streets, which were all alive with a restless sea of people. On either side of the way great crowds of town and country folk stood packed as close together as dried herring in a box, so that the Sheriffs men, halberds in hands, could hardly press them back to leave space for the King's riding. \"Ay, marry,\" grumbled the other, \"but 'a did not think to have a hardfooted knave trample all over my poor toes as though they were no more than so many acorns in the forest.\" But of a sudden all this bickering ceased, for a clear sound of many bugle horns came winding down the street. Then all the people craned their necks and gazed in the direction whence the sound came, and the crowding and the pushing and the swaying grew greater than ever. And now a gallant array of men came gleaming into sight, and the cheering of the people ran down the crowd as the fire runs in dry grass. Then, above all the tumult and the shouting a great voice was heard roaring, \"Heaven, its saints bless thee, our gracious King Richard! and likewise Our Lady of the Fountain, bless thee!\" Then King Richard, looking toward the spot whence the sound came, saw a tall, burly, strapping priest standing in front of all the crowd with his legs wide apart as he backed against those behind. \"By my soul, Sheriff,\" said the King, laughing, \"ye have the tallest priests in Nottinghamshire that e'er I saw in all my life. If Heaven never answered prayers because of deafness, methinks I would nevertheless have blessings bestowed upon me, for that man yonder would make the great stone image of Saint Peter rub its ears and hearken unto him. I would that I had an army of such as he.\" To this the Sheriff answered never a word, but all the blood left his cheeks, and he caught at the pommel of his saddle to keep himself from falling; for he also saw the fellow that so shouted, and knew him to be Friar Tuck; and, moreover, behind Friar Tuck he saw the faces of Robin Hood and Little John and Will Scarlet and Will Stutely and Allan a Dale and others of the band. \"How now,\" said the King hastily, \"art thou ill, Sheriff, that thou growest so white?\" \"Nay, Your Majesty,\" said the Sheriff, \"it was nought but a sudden pain that will soon pass by.\" Thus he spake, for he was ashamed that the King should know that Robin Hood feared him so little that he thus dared to come within the very gates of Nottingham Town. Thus rode the King into Nottingham Town on that bright afternoon in the early fall season; and none rejoiced more than Robin Hood and his merry men to see him come so royally unto his own. At these words the Sheriff of Nottingham looked down gloomily, and the Bishop of Hereford, who was present, gnawed his nether lip. Quoth the Sheriff, \"I can tell Your Majesty but little concerning the doings of those naughty fellows, saving that they are the boldest lawbreakers in all the land.\" Then up spake young Sir Henry of the Lea, a great favorite with the King, under whom he had fought in Palestine. \"May it please Your Majesty,\" said he, \"when I was away in Palestine I heard ofttimes from my father, and in most cases I heard of this very fellow, Robin Hood. If Your Majesty would like I will tell you a certain adventure of this outlaw.\" Then the King laughingly bade him tell his tale, whereupon he told how Robin Hood had aided Sir Richard of the Lea with money that he had borrowed from the Bishop of Hereford. Again and again the King and those present roared with laughter, while the poor Bishop waxed cherry red in the face with vexation, for the matter was a sore thing with him. When Sir Henry of the Lea was done, others of those present, seeing how the King enjoyed this merry tale, told other tales concerning Robin and his merry men. \"By the hilt of my sword,\" said stout King Richard, \"this is as bold and merry a knave as ever I heard tell of. Marry, I must take this matter in hand and do what thou couldst not do, Sheriff, to wit, clear the forest of him and his band.\" \"Marry, Sir Hubert,\" quoth the King, \"this pleaseth me well. But how wilt thou cause me to meet Robin Hood?\" \"I like thy plan, Sir Hubert,\" quoth the King merrily, \"and tomorrow we will try it and see whether there be virtue in it.\" So it happened that when early the next morning the Sheriff came to where his liege lord was abiding, to pay his duty to him, the King told him what they had talked of the night before, and what merry adventure they were set upon undertaking that morning. But when the Sheriff heard this he smote his forehead with his fist. \"Alas!\" said he, \"what evil counsel is this that hath been given thee! O my gracious lord and King, you know not what you do! This villain that you thus go to seek hath no reverence either for king or king's laws.\" \"But did I not hear aright when I was told that this Robin Hood hath shed no blood since he was outlawed, saving only that of that vile Guy of Gisbourne, for whose death all honest men should thank him?\" \"Then,\" quoth the King, breaking in on the Sheriffs speech, \"what have I to fear in meeting him, having done him no harm? Truly, there is no danger in this. But mayhap thou wilt go with us, Sir Sheriff.\" \"Nay,\" quoth the Sheriff hastily, \"Heaven forbid!\" \"How now, fellow,\" quoth the King, \"who art thou, thou naughty rogue? Hast thou no regard for such holy men as we are?\" \"It may not be,\" said Robin, \"for it would look but ill of us to let such holy men travel onward with empty stomachs. But I doubt not that thou hast a fat purse to pay thy score at our inn since thou offerest freely so much for a poor draught of wine. Show me thy purse, reverend brother, or I may perchance have to strip thy robes from thee to search for it myself.\" \"Nay, use no force,\" said the King sternly. \"Here is my purse, but lay not thy lawless hands upon our person.\" \"Hut, tut,\" quoth merry Robin, \"what proud words are these? Art thou the King of England, to talk so to me? Here, Will, take this purse and see what there is within.\" \"Then keep them covered in peace,\" said Robin, \"and far be it from me to make you break your vows.\" Little John, with threescore yeomen at his heels, had also gone forth that morning to wait along the roads and bring a rich guest to Sherwood glade, if such might be his luck, for many with fat purses must travel the roads at this time, when such great doings were going on in Nottinghamshire, but though Little John and so many others were gone, Friar Tuck and twoscore or more stout yeomen were seated or lying around beneath the great tree, and when Robin and the others came they leaped to their feet to meet him. \"By my soul,\" quoth merry King Richard, when he had gotten down from his mule and stood looking about him, \"thou hast in very truth a fine lot of young men about thee, Robin. Methinks King Richard himself would be glad of such a bodyguard.\" \"These are not all of my fellows,\" said Robin proudly, \"for threescore more of them are away on business with my good right-hand man, Little John. But, as for King Richard, I tell thee, brother, there is not a man of us all but would pour out our blood like water for him. Ye churchmen cannot rightly understand our King; but we yeomen love him right loyally for the sake of his brave doings which are so like our own.\" \"Who art thou, mad priest?\" said the King in a serious voice, albeit he smiled beneath his cowl. At this Friar Tuck looked all around with a slow gaze. \"Look you now,\" quoth he, \"never let me hear you say again that I am no patient man. Here is a knave of a friar calleth me a mad priest, and yet I smite him not. My name is Friar Tuck, fellow--the holy Friar Tuck.\" \"There, Tuck,\" said Robin, \"thou hast said enow. Prythee, cease thy talk and bring some wine. These reverend men are athirst, and sin' they have paid so richly for their score they must e'en have the best.\" Friar Tuck bridled at being so checked in his speech, nevertheless he went straightway to do Robin's bidding; so presently a great crock was brought, and wine was poured out for all the guests and for Robin Hood. Then Robin held his cup aloft. \"Stay!\" cried he. \"Tarry in your drinking till I give you a pledge. Here is to good King Richard of great renown, and may all enemies to him be confounded.\" Then all drank the King's health, even the King himself. \"Methinks, good fellow,\" said he, \"thou hast drunk to thine own confusion.\" \"Never a whit,\" quoth merry Robin, \"for I tell thee that we of Sherwood are more loyal to our lord the King than those of thine order. We would give up our lives for his benefiting, while ye are content to lie snug in your abbeys and priories let reign who will.\" At this the King laughed. Quoth he, \"Perhaps King Richard's welfare is more to me than thou wottest of, fellow. But enough of that matter. We have paid well for our fare, so canst thou not show us some merry entertainment? I have oft heard that ye are wondrous archers; wilt thou not show us somewhat of your skill?\" \"With all my heart,\" said Robin, \"we are always pleased to show our guests all the sport that is to be seen. As Gaffer Swanthold sayeth, 'Tis a hard heart that will not give a caged starling of the best'; and caged starlings ye are with us. Ho, lads! Set up a garland at the end of the glade.\" \"Hearken to him!\" quoth Friar Tuck. \"Why, master, thou dost bestow buffets from thy strapping nephew as though they were love taps from some bouncing lass. I warrant thou art safe to hit the garland thyself, or thou wouldst not be so free of his cuffing.\" At this a great roar went up, those of the yeomen who sat upon the grass rolling over and over and shouting with laughter, for never before had they seen their master so miss his mark; but Robin flung his bow upon the ground with vexation. \"Now, out upon it!\" cried he. \"That shaft had an ill feather to it, for I felt it as it left my fingers. Give me a clean arrow, and I will engage to split the wand with it.\" At these words the yeomen laughed louder than ever. \"Nay, good uncle,\" said Will Scarlet in his soft, sweet voice, \"thou hast had thy fair chance and hast missed thine aim out and out. I swear the arrow was as good as any that hath been loosed this day. Come hither; I owe thee somewhat, and would fain pay it.\" \"Go, good master,\" roared Friar Tuck, \"and may my blessing go with thee. Thou hast bestowed these love taps of Will Scarlet's with great freedom. It were pity an thou gottest not thine own share.\" So spake the merry King; but, even as he ended, there came suddenly the sound of many voices, and out from the covert burst Little John and threescore men, with Sir Richard of the Lea in the midst. Across the glade they came running, and, as they came, Sir Richard shouted to Robin: \"Make haste, dear friend, gather thy band together and come with me! King Richard left Nottingham Town this very morning, and cometh to seek thee in the woodlands. I know not how he cometh, for it was but a rumor of this that reached me; nevertheless, I know that it is the truth. Therefore hasten with all thy men, and come to Castle Lea, for there thou mayst lie hidden till thy present danger passeth. Who are these strangers that thou hast with thee?\" \"How is this, Sir Richard?\" said he sternly. \"How darest thou step between me and these fellows? And how darest thou offer thy knightly Castle of the Lea for a refuge to them? Wilt thou make it a hiding place for the most renowned outlaws in England?\" Then Sir Richard of the Lea raised his eyes to the King's face. \"Far be it from me,\" said he, \"to do aught that could bring Your Majesty's anger upon me. Yet, sooner would I face Your Majesty's wrath than suffer aught of harm that I could stay to fall upon Robin Hood and his band; for to them I owe life, honor, everything. Should I, then, desert him in his hour of need?\" Then all arose and the King beckoned Robin Hood to come to him. \"How now,\" quoth he, \"is thine ear still too deaf to hear me speak?\" \"Mine ears would be deafened in death ere they would cease to hear Your Majesty's voice,\" said Robin. \"As for the blow that Your Majesty struck me, I would say that though my sins are haply many, methinks they have been paid up in full thereby.\" So Robin bade his men make ready a grand feast. Straightway great fires were kindled and burned brightly, at which savory things roasted sweetly. While this was going forward, the King bade Robin call Allan a Dale, for he would hear him sing. So word was passed for Allan, and presently he came, bringing his harp. \"Marry,\" said King Richard, \"if thy singing match thy looks it is fair enough. Prythee, strike up a ditty and let us have a taste of thy skill.\" Then Allan touched his harp lightly, and all words were hushed while he sang thus: \"'_Oh, where has thou been, my daughter? Oh, where hast thou been this day Daughter, my daughter?' 'Oh, I have been to the river's side, Where the waters lie all gray and wide, And the gray sky broods o'er the leaden tide, And the shrill wind sighs a straining.' \"'What sawest thou there, my daughter? What sawest thou there this day, Daughter, my daughter?' 'Oh, I saw a boat come drifting nigh, Where the quivering rushes hiss and sigh, And the water soughs as it gurgles by, And the shrill wind sighs a straining.' \"'Why growest thou so cold, my daughter? Why growest thou so cold and white, Daughter, my daughter?' Oh, never a word the daughter said, But she sat all straight with a drooping head, For her heart was stilled and her face was dead: And the shrill wind sighed a straining_.\" All listened in silence; and when Allan a Dale had done King Richard heaved a sigh. \"By the breath of my body, Allan,\" quoth he, \"thou hast such a wondrous sweet voice that it strangely moves my heart. But what doleful ditty is this for the lips of a stout yeoman? I would rather hear thee sing a song of love and battle than a sad thing like that. Moreover, I understand it not; what meanest thou by the words?\" \"I know not, Your Majesty,\" said Allan, shaking his head, \"for ofttimes I sing that which I do not clearly understand mine own self.\" \"Well, well,\" quoth the King, \"let it pass; only I tell thee this, Allan, thou shouldst turn thy songs to such matters as I spoke of, to wit, love or war; for in sooth thou hast a sweeter voice than Blondell, and methought he was the best minstrel that ever I heard.\" That night he lay in Sherwood Forest upon a bed of sweet green leaves, and early the next morning he set forth from the woodlands for Nottingham Town, Robin Hood and all of his band going with him. You may guess what a stir there was in the good town when all these famous outlaws came marching into the streets. As for the Sheriff, he knew not what to say nor where to look when he saw Robin Hood in such high favor with the King, while all his heart was filled with gall because of the vexation that lay upon him. The next day the King took leave of Nottingham Town; so Robin Hood and Little John and Will Scarlet and Allan a Dale shook hands with all the rest of the band, kissing the cheeks of each man, and swearing that they would often come to Sherwood and see them. Then each mounted his horse and rode away in the train of the King. THUS END the Merry Adventures of Robin Hood; for, in spite of his promise, it was many a year ere he saw Sherwood again. Robin, through his great fame as an archer, became a favorite with the King, so that he speedily rose in rank to be the chief of all the yeomen. At last the King, seeing how faithful and how loyal he was, created him Earl of Huntingdon; so Robin followed the King to the wars, and found his time so full that he had no chance to come back to Sherwood for even so much as a day. As for Allan a Dale and his wife, the fair Ellen, they followed Robin Hood and shared in all his ups and downs of life. And now, dear friend, you who have journeyed with me in all these merry doings, I will not bid you follow me further, but will drop your hand here with a \"good den,\" if you wish it; for that which cometh hereafter speaks of the breaking up of things, and shows how joys and pleasures that are dead and gone can never be set upon their feet to walk again. I will not dwell upon the matter overlong, but will tell as speedily as may be of how that stout fellow, Robin Hood, died as he had lived, not at court as Earl of Huntingdon, but with bow in hand, his heart in the greenwood, and he himself a right yeoman. Now it chanced that on that very morn Little John was walking through a spur of the forest upon certain matters of business, and as he paced along, sunk in meditation, the faint, clear notes of a distant bugle horn came to his ear. As leaps the stag when it feels the arrow at its heart, so leaped Little John when that distant sound met his ear. All the blood in his body seemed to rush like a flame into his cheeks as he bent his head and listened. Again came the bugle note, thin and clear, and yet again it sounded. Then Little John gave a great, wild cry of yearning, of joy, and yet of grief, and, putting down his head, he dashed into the thicket. Onward he plunged, crackling and rending, as the wild boar rushes through the underbrush. Little recked he of thorns and briers that scratched his flesh and tore his clothing, for all he thought of was to get, by the shortest way, to the greenwood glade whence he knew the sound of the bugle horn came. Out he burst from the covert, at last, a shower of little broken twigs falling about him, and, without pausing a moment, rushed forward and flung himself at Robin's feet. Then he clasped his arms around the master's knees, and all his body was shaken with great sobs; neither could Robin nor Allan a Dale speak, but stood looking down at Little John, the tears rolling down their cheeks. Now Robin had done much to aid this cousin of his; for it was through King Richard's love of him that she had been made prioress of the place. But there is nought in the world so easily forgot as gratitude; so, when the Prioress of Kirklees had heard how her cousin, the Earl of Huntingdon, had thrown away his earldom and gone back again to Sherwood, she was vexed to the soul, and feared lest her cousinship with him should bring the King's wrath upon her also. Thus it happened that when Robin came to her and told her how he wished her services as leech, she began plotting ill against him in her mind, thinking that by doing evil to him she might find favor with his enemies. Nevertheless, she kept this well to herself and received Robin with seeming kindness. She led him up the winding stone stair to a room which was just beneath the eaves of a high, round tower; but she would not let Little John come with him. So the poor yeoman turned his feet away from the door of the nunnery, and left his master in the hands of the women. But, though he did not come in, neither did he go far away; for he laid him down in a little glade near by, where he could watch the place that Robin abided, like some great, faithful dog turned away from the door where his master has entered. There he saw his own dear master leaning against the gray stone wall, his face all white and drawn, and his head swaying to and fro with weakness. Then, with a great, wild cry of love and grief and pity, Little John leaped forward and caught Robin Hood in his arms. Up he lifted him as a mother lifts her child, and carrying him to the bed, laid him tenderly thereon. And now the Prioress came in hastily, for she was frightened at what she had done, and dreaded the vengeance of Little John and the others of the band; then she stanched the blood by cunning bandages, so that it flowed no more. All the while Little John stood grimly by, and after she had done he sternly bade her to begone, and she obeyed, pale and trembling. Then, after she had departed, Little John spake cheering words, laughing loudly, and saying that all this was a child's fright, and that no stout yeoman would die at the loss of a few drops of blood. \"Why,\" quoth he, \"give thee a se'ennight and thou wilt be roaming the woodlands as boldly as ever.\" But Robin shook his head and smiled faintly where he lay. \"Mine own dear Little John,\" whispered he, \"Heaven bless thy kind, rough heart. But, dear friend, we will never roam the woodlands together again.\" As he finished speaking, he raised himself of a sudden and sat upright. His old strength seemed to come back to him, and, drawing the bowstring to his ear, he sped the arrow out of the open casement. As the shaft flew, his hand sank slowly with the bow till it lay across his knees, and his body likewise sank back again into Little John's loving arms; but something had sped from that body, even as the winged arrow sped from the bow. For some minutes Little John sat motionless, but presently he laid that which he held gently down, then, folding the hands upon the breast and covering up the face, he turned upon his heel and left the room without a word or a sound. Thus died Robin Hood, at Kirklees Nunnery, in fair Yorkshire, with mercy in his heart toward those that had been his undoing; for thus he showed mercy for the erring and pity for the weak through all the time of his living. And now, dear friend, we also must part, for our merry journeyings have ended, and here, at the grave of Robin Hood, we turn, each going his own way. 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Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND William Hope Hodgson TO MY FATHER _(Whose feet tread the lost aeons)_ Open the door, And listen! Only the wind's muffled roar, And the glisten Of tears 'round the moon. And, in fancy, the tread Of vanishing shoon- Out in the n... | redpajama-book | 25,507 |
This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at ., carlo traverso, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. MARY KING WADDINGTON I. WHEN MACMAHON WAS PRESIDENT II. IMPRESSIONS OF THE ASSEMBLY AT VERSAILLES III. M. WADDINGTON AS... | redpajama-book | 4,383 |
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. BY ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY PH.D. WHAT IS WORTH WHILE? CULTURE AND REFORM THE VICTORY OF OUR FAITH ANNA ROBERTSON BROWN LINDSAY I. CHORDS OF AWAKENING: THE HIGHER CONQUEST II. PRELUDE: THE CALL OF JESUS III. PROCESSIONAL:... | redpajama-book | 20,023 |
Produced by Christine De Ryck, Stig M. Valstad, Suzanne L. Shell and PG Distributed Proofreaders A VOYAGE TO THE MOON: WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY, OF THE PEOPLE OF MOROSOFIA, AND OTHER LUNARIANS. BY GEORGE TUCKER (JOSEPH ATTERLEY) Atterley's birth and education--He makes a voya... | redpajama-book | 14,066 |
Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders TRANSLATED BY JAMES C. BROGAN _Beginneth the Book called Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta, sent by her to Ladies in Love._ _Wherein the lady describes who she was, and by what signs her misfortunes were foreshadowed, and at what time, and where, and in what ... | redpajama-book | 2,549 |
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders _Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates. As I publish the case, in this volume, simpl... | redpajama-book | 19,431 |
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Danny Wool, Luiz Antonio de Souza, Elisa Williams, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed Proofreaders STEWART EDWARD WHITE SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS _Illustrations by Will Crawford_ II. THE "LAUGHING LASS" V. THE DISAPPEARANCE THE BRASS BOUND CHEST _Being the story told by Ralph Slade, Free Lance, to the... | redpajama-book | 39,106 |
Produced by Dennis McCarthy The base text for this edition has been provided by Digital Dante, a project sponsored by Columbia University's Institute for Learning Technologies. Specific thanks goes to Jennifer Hogan (Project Editor/Director), Tanya Larkin (Assistant to Editor), Robert W. Cole (Proofreader/Assistant Edi... | redpajama-book | 34,840 |
Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE EULOGIES OF HOWARD. THE EULOGIES OF HOWARD My arguments, and my zeal, made some impression on the mind of my antagonist; and sunk so deeply into my own, that on my retiring to rest they gave rise to the following vision. I obeyed with reverential silence; ... | redpajama-book | 2,200 |
Produced by Andrew Heath, Joshua Hutchinson, Audrey Longhurst and PG Distributed Proofreaders A Foreign Dish for every day in the year Make a pancake batter and fry in thin cakes. Then spread them with a layer of anchovies, butter and a layer of caviare. Sprinkle with minced shallots, cayenne pepper and lemon-juice. Ro... | redpajama-book | 1,628 |
Produced by Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA [Illustration: HOOFED LOCUSTS.] I THE SIERRA NEVADA II THE GLACIERS III THE SNOW IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA V THE PASSES VI THE GLACIER LAKES VII THE GLACIER MEADOWS VIII THE FORESTS IX THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL X A WIND-STORM IN THE... | redpajama-book | 12,404 |
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dante's Purgatory [Divine Comedy] Translanted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! Please take a look at the important information in this header. We encourage you to... | redpajama-book | 37,883 |
Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders _An Illustrated Monthly_ EDITED BY GEORGE NEWNES The Queen of Holland. By Mary Spencer-Warren. The Helmet. From the French of Ferdinand Beissier. The Music of Nature. By T. Camden Pratt. Part II. A Terrible New Year's Eve. By Kathleen Huddleston. Personal Remi... | redpajama-book | 18,710 |
E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Sarah Lewis, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders _'Certainly not Matilda I would rather she were called Aspasia.'_ Edith read this expression of feeling on a colourless telegraph form, and as she was, at Knightsbridge, unable to hear the ironical tone of the message she took... | redpajama-book | 33,254 |
Produced by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci and PG Distributed Proofreaders Other Books by the Same Author: "Journeys to Bagdad" _Sixth printing_. "Chimney-Pot Papers" _Third printing_. Illustrated by Theodore Diedricksen, Jr. TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER I. There's Pippins and Cheese to Come II. On Buying Old Books III. Any... | redpajama-book | 11,831 |
Produced by Imran Ghory, Stan Goodman, Josephine Paolucci and PG Distributed Proofreaders BEING NARRATIVES OF NOBLE LIVES AND BRAVE DEEDS _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_. GOOD MORNING! GOOD NIGHT! TRUE STORIES PURE AND BRIGHT. _A Great Commander on a Famous Battlefield_ THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON _Some Children of the Kingdom_ _The V... | redpajama-book | 20,975 |
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and PG Distributed Proofreaders [Illustration: They walked, thus guided by an obsequious waiter, through a light _confetti_ of tossed greetings.] [Dedication: To my mother and my father] II. SIEVE OF FULFILMENT IV. HERS _NOT_ TO REASON WHY VII. GET READY THE WREATHS There w... | redpajama-book | 39,621 |
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION. HOSPITAL OF ST. THOMAS, CANTERBURY. The subject of the above engraving claims the attention of the antiquarian researcher, not as the lofty sculptured mansion of our monastic progenito... | redpajama-book | 1,582 |
ITS TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS II. THE PHILISTINES, III. DISCOMFITURE OF THE PHILISTINES, IV. THE SUPPER CLUB, V. CATCHING A TARTAR, VII. RONLEIGH COLLEGE, IX. A HOLIDAY ADVENTURE, XI. SHADOWS OF COMING EVENTS, XII. THE WRAXBY MATCH, XIII. THE ELECTIONS, XIV. A PASSAGE OF ARMS, XV. THE READING-ROOM RIOT, XVI. THE CIPHER LETTE... | redpajama-book | 30,706 |
Credit for e-text: The Library of Congress, Joshua Hutchinson, David King, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team SPALDING'S OFFICIAL ATHLETIC LIBRARY AMERICA'S NATIONAL GAME The above work should have a place in every public library in this country, as also in the libraries of public schools an... | redpajama-book | 11,142 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE HUNT BALL MYSTERY BY SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY, Bt. Author of "A Prince of Lovers," "The Mystery of the Unicorn," etc., etc. II THE STAINED FLOWERS III THE STREAK ON THE CUFF IV THE MISSING GUEST VI THE MYSTERY OF CLEMENT HENSHAW VII ... | redpajama-book | 40,253 |
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dante's Paradise [Divine Comedy] Translanted by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! Please take a look at the important information in this header. We encourage you to ... | redpajama-book | 38,109 |
Produced by Papeters, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE LIFE OF HON. WILLIAM F. CODY KNOWN AS BUFFALO BILL THE FAMOUS HUNTER, SCOUT AND GUIDE. To GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN, THIS BOOK IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. [Illustration: Yours Sincerely, W. F. Cody] "Mr. Cody seemed n... | redpajama-book | 28,236 |
Produced by Clytie Siddall, Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS In addition to the new poetical matter included in this volume, attention should, also, be solicited on behalf of the notes, which will be found to contain much matter, interesting both from... | redpajama-book | 23,556 |
Produced by Joel Erickson, Dave Avis and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. A BEAUTIFUL POSSIBILITY EDITH FERGUSON BLACK A BEAUTIFUL POSSIBILITY. Behind the jalousies of the library the owner of the villa sat at a desk, busily writing. He was a slight, delicate looking man, with an expression of careless good hu... | redpajama-book | 47,730 |
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Anita Paque, Shawn Wheeler, David Schaal, Anuradha Valsa Raj and PG Distributed Proofreaders (C. E. Raimond) Author of "The Open Question," "Below the Salt," etc. _With a Map_ I. WINTER CAMP IN THE YUKON VI. A PENITENTIAL JOURNEY IX. A CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC X. PRINCESS MUCKLUCK XII. THE GREAT WH... | redpajama-book | 94,239 |
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Tapio Riikonen and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE WORKS OF APHRA BEHN, VOL. III EDITED BY MONTAGUE SUMMERS So a young Poet, who had never been Dabling beyond the Height of Ballading; Who, in his brisk Essays, durst ne'er excel The lucky Flight of rhyming Doggerel, Sets up with this suffici... | redpajama-book | 88,116 |
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! Please take a look at the important information in this header. We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.... | redpajama-book | 110,189 |
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK A Comedy of Limitations "_To this new South, who values her high past in chief, as fit foundation of that edifice whereon she labors day by day, and with augmenting strokes_." PRISCILLA BRADLEY CABELL "Daily I find so... | redpajama-book | 36,392 |
Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest Territories and Alaska Founder of Dawson City, N.W.T. Explorer, Miner and Prospector Having recently returned for a temporary stay, after a somewhat successful experience, I have received applications for information ... | redpajama-book | 3,490 |
This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan. THE FATHER OF BRITISH CANADA A Chronicle of Carleton BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Both armies spent a terrible winter after the Battle of the Plains. There was better shelter for the French in Montreal than for the British among the ruins of Quebec. But in the matter of food the pos... | redpajama-book | 1,370 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders [Illustration: Darrin's Blow Knocked the Midshipman Down] H. IRVING HANCOCK Illustrated I. A QUESTION OF MIDSHIPMAN HONOR II. DAVE'S PAP-SHEET ADVICE III. MIDSHIPMAN PENNINGTON GOES TOO FAR IV. A LITTLE MEETING ASHORE V. WHEN THE SECONDS WONDERE... | redpajama-book | 27,731 |
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Aldarondo, Carol David and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. SALUTE TO ADVENTURERS TO MAJOR-GENERAL THE HON. SIR REGINALD TALBOT, K.C.B. I tell of old Virginian ways; And who more fit my tale to scan Than you, who knew in far-off days The eager horse of Sheridan; Who saw t... | redpajama-book | 50,216 |
Produced by Stan Goodman, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team A STORY OF THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. By Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant "It is a very simple thing to do," the lawyer said. "I will save you all trouble; nothing but your signature will be wanted--and that you give every day." "Oh, I should... | redpajama-book | 5,375 |
Produced by Judith Smith and Natalie Salter OR THE INFERNO FROM THE DIVINE COMEDY THE REV. H. F. CARY, M.A. Then was a little respite to the fear, That in my heart's recesses deep had lain, All of that night, so pitifully pass'd: And as a man, with difficult short breath, Forespent with toiling, 'scap'd from sea to sho... | redpajama-book | 12,506 |
Produced by Stan Goodman, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. By Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant "Yes," said the other voice, echoing that gentle laugh of hers, "you have died too." "Were you afraid of it?" the other said. There was a little agitation for the moment in her heart. She was so glad, so... | redpajama-book | 7,047 |
Produced by Stan Goodman, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE OPEN DOOR, AND THE PORTRAIT Stories of the Seen and the Unseen By Margaret O. Wilson Oliphant The summer was a very happy period of repose for us all. The warmth of Indian suns was still in our veins. It seemed to us that we could ne... | redpajama-book | 5,010 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Tam and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS, THE SAYINGS OF MENCIUS, THE SHI-KING, THE TRAVELS OF FA-HIEN, AND THE SORROWS OF HAN WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES BY EPIPHANIUS WILSON, A.M. THE ANALECTS OF CONFUCIUS I. On Learning--Miscellaneous Sayings II. Good G... | redpajama-book | 36,206 |
Produced by Afra Ullah, Brett Koonce and PG Distributed Proofreaders AUNT JANE'S NIECES ON VACATION I THE HOBO AT CHAZY JUNCTION II THE INVASION OF MILLVILLE III THE DAWN OF A GREAT ENTERPRISE IV THE WAY INTO PRINT V DIVIDING THE RESPONSIBILITIES VI MR. SKEELTY OF THE MILL VII THE SKETCH ARTIST VIII THE _Millville Dail... | redpajama-book | 32,913 |
Produced by Judith Smith and Natalie Salter THE DIVINE COMEDY: PURGATORY "Say who are ye, that stemming the blind stream, Forth from th' eternal prison-house have fled?" He spoke and moved those venerable plumes. "Who hath conducted, or with lantern sure Lights you emerging from the depth of night, That makes the infer... | redpajama-book | 13,044 |
Produced by Imran Ghory, Stan Goodman, Richard Prairie and PG Distributed Proofreaders BIOLOGICAL & GEOLOGICAL On the contrary, I found that the task of putting the truths learned in the field, the laboratory and the museum, into language which, without bating a jot of scientific accuracy shall be generally intelligibl... | redpajama-book | 23,127 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Virginia Paque and PG Distributed Proofreaders [Transcriber's Note: The spelling inconsistencies of the original have been retained in this etext.] "Heavy and solemn the cloudy column Over the green fields marching came, Measureless spread like a table bread For the cold grim dice of the ... | redpajama-book | 68,651 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sjaani and PG Proofreaders HAPPINESS AND MARRIAGE "The inner side of every cloud Is bright and shining; I therefore turn my clouds about, And always wear them inside out-To show the lining." "And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, And ... | redpajama-book | 10,908 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Ginny Brewer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE MYSTERY OF THE BOULE CABINET With Illustrations by THOMAS FOGARTY A.B.M. Fellow-Sherlockian "I GRABBED HER AGAIN, AND JUST THEN MR. VANTINE OPENED THE DOOR AND CAME OUT INTO THE HALL." "A MOMENT LATER M. FELIX ARMAND WAS SHOWN... | redpajama-book | 49,049 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE POWER AND THE GLORY By GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE I. THE BIRTH OF A WOMAN-CHILD II. THE BIRTH OF AN AMBITION III. A PEAK IN DARIEN IV. OF THE USE OF FEET V. THE MOCCASIN FLOWER VI. WEAVERS AND WEFT VII. ABOVE THE VALLEY VIII. OF THE USE OF WINGS IX. A ... | redpajama-book | 61,271 |
Produced by Judith Smith and Natalie Salter HELL, PURGATORY, AND PARADISE THE REV. H. F. CARY, M.A. I suffer'd it not long, and yet so long That I beheld it bick'ring sparks around, As iron that comes boiling from the fire. And suddenly upon the day appear'd A day new-ris'n, as he, who hath the power, Had with another ... | redpajama-book | 7,049 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Michael Lockey and PG Distributed Proofreaders STORIES OF GREAT AMERICANS FOR LITTLE AMERICANS The primary aim of this book is to furnish the little learner reading matter that will excite his attention and give him pleasure, and thus make lighter the difficult task of learning to read. T... | redpajama-book | 19,922 |
Produced by Eric Eldred, Jerry Fairbanks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team S. M. EDWARDES, C.V.O. The various chapters of this book originally appeared under the _nom-de-plume_ of "Etonensis" in the _Times of India_, to the proprietors of which journal I am indebted for permission to publish them in book-fo... | redpajama-book | 2,746 |
Produced by David Starner, Beth Trapaga and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Scans from Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona _ENGLISH_ HOUSEWIFRY With CUTS for the orderly placing the DISHES and COURSES; also Bills of Fare for every Month in the Year; and an alphabetical INDEX to the Whole. THE RETURNS OF... | redpajama-book | 10,179 |
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION. DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE'S VILLA, CHISWICK. The lamented death of the Right Hon. George Canning has naturally excited the curiosity of our readers to the villa in which that eminent statesma... | redpajama-book | 1,899 |
E-text produced by Martin Schub A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF VENTURE, A NATIVE OF AFRICA, The following account of the life of VENTURE, is a relation of simple facts, in which nothing is in substance to what he relates himself. Many other interesting and curious passages of his life might have been inserte... | redpajama-book | 982 |
E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, David Kline, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. "Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods." The autumnal change of our woods has not made a deep impression on our own literature yet. October has hardly tinge... | redpajama-book | 17,327 |
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Brett Koonce, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders PLAIN WORDS FROM AMERICA A LETTER TO A GERMAN PROFESSOR Professor DOUGLAS W. JOHNSON Columbia University, New York PLAIN WORDS FROM AMERICA It is only fair to say, also, that our admiration of Germany's achievements in art,... | redpajama-book | 4,154 |
E-text prepared by Anne Soulard, Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. [Concluded.] To Adeodata, a worthy and deserving Virgin, and rests here in peace, her Christ co... | redpajama-book | 18,554 |
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! Please take a look at the important information in this header. We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.... | redpajama-book | 2,083 |
E-text prepared by Debra Storr and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders MOBILIZING WOMAN-POWER By HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH TO THE ABLE AND DEVOTED WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH FOREWORD BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT III. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN GREAT BRITAIN IV. MOBILIZING WOMEN IN FRANCE V. MOBILIZI... | redpajama-book | 14,420 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Ginny Brewer, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders The Boy Allies At Jutland The Greatest Naval Battle of History By Ensign ROBERT L. DRAKE Men lined the rails of the monster ship. These were her crew--or some of her crew, to be exact--for the others were engaged in dutie... | redpajama-book | 39,032 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY BY JOHN R. WATSON & ARTHUR J. REES "Hallo! Is that Hampstead Police Station?" "Detective-Inspector Chippenfield of Scotland Yard. Tell Inspector Seldon I want him, and be quick about i... | redpajama-book | 63,360 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE HOUSE OF THE WHISPERING PINES By ANNA KATHARINE GREEN "Mazes intricate, Eccentric, interwov'd, yet regular Then most, when most irregular they seem". SWEETWATER TO THE FRONT WHAT THE PINES WHISPERED To ... | redpajama-book | 56,507 |
Produced by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [Illustration: He heard Joan's voice] BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD Author of The Danger Trail, Etc. Illustrated by Gayle Hoskins and Frank Hoffman III. McCREADY PAYS THE DEBT V. THE FIGHT IN THE SNOW VII. OUT OF THE BLIZZARD VIII. THE GREAT... | redpajama-book | 18,636 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. ROMANTIC BALLADS, TALES OF THE BERBERS, STORIES OF THE KABYLES, FOLK-LORE, AND NATIONAL TRADITIONS WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FRANCE, AND DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMIE D'ALGER SPECIAL INTRODUCTION. The term Mo... | redpajama-book | 42,859 |
E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders THE MINUTE BOYS OF THE MOHAWK VALLEY Illustrated by A. Burnham Shute [Illustration: "An Indian strode gravely into the encampment"] I. Young Soldiers II. The Powwow III. Disappointment IV. On the Oriskany V. Divided Duty VI. Between the Lines VII. Insubordin... | redpajama-book | 59,710 |
E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF SARAH," "THE SHIP OF DREAMS," ETC. V. THE HEAD OF THE CORNER VII. OLD LETTERS AND NEW VIII. THE ANNIVERSARY IX. A WINTER BUTTERFLY X. THE TURN OF THE TIDE XI. MENTAL TREATMENT XII. "A PAS... | redpajama-book | 16,918 |
E-text prepared by Carlo Traverso, Eric Casteleijn, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at . [Transcriber's note: The spelling peculiarities of the original have been retained in this etext.] E... | redpajama-book | 19,549 |
E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Brett Koonce, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders Editorial note: Many paragraphs in the original text ended without punctuation, and this state has been preserved in this Project Gutenberg edition. DONALD A. MACKENZIE. Miss YULE, of TARRADALE. The immemorial folk-beliefs of ou... | redpajama-book | 12,370 |
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Andrea Ball, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team Gutta Percha Willie: the Working Genius [Illustration: WILLIE'S HORSE-SHOEING FORGE.] I. WHO HE WAS AND WHERE HE WAS II. WILLIE'S EDUCATION III. HE IS TURNED INTO SOMETHING HE NEVER WAS BEFORE IV. HE SERVES A... | redpajama-book | 22,469 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team A SOLDIER OF VIRGINIA A TALE OF COLONEL WASHINGTON AND BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT BY BURTON EGBERT STEVENSON TO THE MEMORY OF THE GALLANT MEN WHO FELL WITH DUST OF FAILURE BITTER ON THEIR LIPS THAT OTHERS MIGHT BE T... | redpajama-book | 34,687 |
Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team [Illustration: An eagle pecking at the heart of a bearded man, chained to a rock, with the inscription: "Cor ex est numquam ex cordis regina volantum".] THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS: AND OTHER TALES HORACE HOWARD FURNESS AND GEORG BRANDES. DABO DUOBUS T... | redpajama-book | 47,694 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Ted Garvin, L Barber and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE TROJAN WOMEN OF EURIPIDES TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY GILBERT MURRAY, LL.D., D.LITT. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD "How are ye blind, Ye treaders down of citie... | redpajama-book | 7,657 |
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE HEALING OF NATIONS AND THE HIDDEN SOURCES OF THEIR STRIFE "_The Tree of Life whose leaves are for the Healing of the Nations_" III. THE ROOTS OF THE GREAT WAR IV. THE CASE AGAINST GERMANY V. THE CASE FOR GERMANY VI. THE HEALING OF NATIONS VII.... | redpajama-book | 9,386 |
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Ginny Brewer and PG Distributed Proofreaders By MRS. HUMPHRY WARD Author of "ENGLAND'S EFFORT," etc. With an introduction by THE HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT To ANDRE CHEVRILLON True Son of France True Friend of England I dedicate this book. England has in this war reached a height of achievemen... | redpajama-book | 8,151 |
Produced by Robert Connal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY AND FAMILY CHAPTER XI. CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE GENEALOGY OF THE BYRON FAMILY. THE BYRON FAMILY, FROM THE CONQUEST ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. For nobler combats here reserved his life, To lead the band where godlike Fa... | redpajama-book | 4,072 |
Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders Illustrated by A. D. M'Cormick I THE HOME ON THE GREAT PLAIN, II THE SPOONBILL AND THE CLOUD, III CHASING A FLYING FIGURE, IV MARTIN IS FOUND BY A DEAF OLD MAN, V THE PEOPLE OF THE MIRAGE, VI MARTIN MEETS WITH SAVAGES, VII ALONE IN THE GREAT FOREST, VIII THE FLOWER AND THE SERPEN... | redpajama-book | 15,415 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Susan Woodring and PG Distributed Proofreaders _The Mystery of a Silent Love_ By CHEVALIER WILLIAM LE QUEUX _Author of "The Closed Book," Etc._ I. HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE II. WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED III. THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER" IV. IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES V. CONTAINS CER... | redpajama-book | 63,670 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team The Postmaster's Daughter Author of "The Terms of Surrender," "The Wings of the Morning," etc., etc. I. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW II. P. C ROBINSON "TAKES A LINE" III. THE GATHERING CLOUDS V. THE SEEDS OF MISC... | redpajama-book | 45,838 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team Boys and Girls from Thackeray By Kate Dickinson Sweetser Pictures by GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS William Makepeace Thackeray--the name is dear to all lovers of classic fiction, who have wandered in enchanted lan... | redpajama-book | 43,212 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, David King, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF TH... | redpajama-book | 39,795 |
Transcribed by David Price, email ALL SAINTS' DAY AND OTHER SERMONS The following Sermons could not be arranged according to any proper sequence. Those, however, which refer to doctrine and the Church Seasons will mostly be found at the beginning of the volume, whilst those which deal with practical subjects are placed... | redpajama-book | 30,049 |
Produced by David Starner, Tam and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE FOLK-LORE OF PLANTS Apart from botanical science, there is perhaps no subject of inquiry connected with plants of wider interest than that suggested by the study of folk-lore. This field of research has been largely worked of late years, and has obtaine... | redpajama-book | 12,036 |
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders With Introduction and Notes by WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI PREFACE MEMOIR OF SHELLEY MEMOIR OF KEATS ADONAIS: ITS COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY ITS ARGUMENT GENERAL EXPOSITION BION AND MOSCHUS ADONAIS: PREFACE ADONAIS CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ... | redpajama-book | 3,394 |
Produced by Ted Garvin, Carol David and PG Distributed Proofreaders WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS BY GORDON HOME "Sweete Themmes runne softly till I end my song"; "The goodly Severn bravely sings The noblest of her British kings, At Caesar's landing what we were, And of the Roman conquest here " Within England of my heart, i... | redpajama-book | 11,490 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE LITERATURE OF ARABIA With Critical and Biographical Sketches by Epiphanius Wilson, A.M. THE ROMANCE OF ANTAR Introduction The Early Fortunes of Antar Khaled and Djaida The Absians and Fazareans THE ROMANCE OF ANTAR [_Translation by Etienne ... | redpajama-book | 17,871 |
E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Sjaani, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS THE ROYAL WELCH FUSILIERS _I have to thank Mr. Harold Monro, of The Poetry Book Shop, for permission to include in this volume certain poems of which he possesses the copyright; also the editor of the "Nation" fo... | redpajama-book | 5,479 |
E-text prepared by Afra Ullah, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team XXIX THE MAJOR DEMANDS AN EXPLANATION BETH RECEIVES AN INVITATION. Professor De Graf was sorting the mail at the breakfast table. "Here's a letter for you, Beth," said he, and tossed it across the cloth to ... | redpajama-book | 41,002 |
E-text prepared by Afra Ullah, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team AUNT JANE'S NIECES AND UNCLE JOHN AUTHOR OF "AUNT JANE'S NIECES," "AUNT JANE'S NIECES ABROAD," "AUNT JANE'S NIECES AT MILLVILLE," "AUNT JANE'S NIECES AT WORK." "AUNT JANE'S NIECES IN SOCIETY," ETC. INTRODUC... | redpajama-book | 30,261 |
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Sjaani, Tom Allen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS No assemblage of letters, parallel or kindred to that in the hands of the reader, if we consider its width of range, the fruitful period over which it stretches, and its typical character,... | redpajama-book | 5,549 |
Many thanks to Peter Moulding who transcribed this eText. email: p e t e r @ m o u l d i n g n a m e . i n f o LANCASHIRE FACTORY FOLK DURING THE COTTON FAMINE Author of "Lancashire Sketches", "Poems and Lancashire Songs", "Tufts of Heather from the Northern Moors", etc, etc. LETTERS AND SPEECHES UPON THE COTTON FAMINE... | redpajama-book | 3,770 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Keith M. Eckrich, Tom Allen and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS A comprehensive and readable account of the world's history, emphasizing the more important events, and presenting these as complete narratives in the master-words of the most e... | redpajama-book | 28,639 |
This Project Gutenberg Etext was prepared by Barry Haworth. Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and against that he came out black--the oddest little figure. He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality in his motions... | redpajama-book | 30,050 |
Produced by William Flis, Keren Vergon, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TALES FROM SHAKESPEAR THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL CHARLES AND MARY LAMB TALES FROM SHAKESPEAR The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the stud... | redpajama-book | 85,975 |
Produced by Ted Garvin, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders HEWLETT! as ship to ship Let us the ensign dip. There may be who despise For dross our merchandise, Our balladries, our bales Of woven tales; Yet, Hewlett, the glad gales Favonian! And what spray Our dolphins toss'd in play, Full in old Triton's beard, on I... | redpajama-book | 8,944 |
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE READERS'S LIBRARY THE GREAT ENGLISH SHORT-STORY WRITERS WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS BY WILLIAM J. DAWSON AND CONINGSBY W. DAWSON I. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SHORT-STORY The Evolution of the Short-Story ... | redpajama-book | 27,435 |
E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Bob Blair, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. Up stairs is a very sweet Annunciation. The subdued, demure, somewhat astonished joy of the Virgin is poetically rendered, both in face and attitude, and the... | redpajama-book | 11,965 |
E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Tam, Tom Allen, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE FAITH OF THE MILLIONS A SELECTION OF PAST ESSAYS GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J. _Nil Obstat:_ J. GERARD, S.J. CENS. THEOL. DEPUTATUS. _Imprimatur:_ HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN, ARCHIEP. WESTMON. It is, however, no... | redpajama-book | 14,959 |
Produced by Simon Page THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE "A meal and a bed--that's good; you must think I live like a king." "And I notice you hate like the mischief to fail, even though." "Only I never have failed," put in Reeve-Howard, with the amused complacency born of much adulati... | redpajama-book | 15,941 |
Produced by Distributed Proofreaders Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism Donald Lemen Clark, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English in Columbia University To my Father and Mother The greatest pleasure that I derive from this writing is that of ackno... | redpajama-book | 5,898 |
E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck By William Cullen Bryant. New York: Printed for the Society MDCCCLXX On its conclusion HUGH MAXWELL submitted the following resolution, which was adopted unanimously: _Resolved_, T... | redpajama-book | 2,545 |
Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. "It is more dangerous to be a baby in London than a soldier in France," said Mrs. H. B. IRVING at the National Baby Week Exhibition. The same disability--namely, middle-age--has prevented us from taking up either of these perilo... | redpajama-book | 5,348 |
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, L. Barber, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders TURKEY: A PAST AND A FUTURE We are thus witnessing the foundation of a new era as momentous, if not as dramatic, as Alexander's passage of the Dardanelles. The Ottoman vesture has waxed old, and something can be discerned of t... | redpajama-book | 4,170 |
Produced by David Widger, Ted Garvin and PG Distributed Proofreaders THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER And now I lift the curtain that hangs between here and No-man's-land. Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand. How Robin Hood Came To Be An Outlaw Robin Hood ... | redpajama-book | 55,744 |
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