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“What more will you give the knight for a full release?” asked the justice. “If you give nothing, you will never hold his lands in peace.”

“A hundred pounds,” said the abbot.

“Give him two,” said the justice.

“Not so,” cried the knight. “If you make it a thousand more, not a foot of my land shall you ever hold. You have outwitted yourself, master abbot, by your greed.”

Sir Richard’s humility was gone; his voice was clear and proud; the churchmen trembled, here was a new tone. Turning to a table, the knight took a bag from under his cloak, and shook out of it on to the board a ringing heap of gold.

“Here is the gold you lent me, Sir Abbot,” he cried. “Count it. You will find it four hundred pounds to the penny. Had you been courteous, I would have been generous. As it is, I pay not a penny over my due.”

“The abbot sat styll, and ete no more
For all his ryall chere;
He cast his head on his sholder,
And fast began to stare.”

So ended this affair, the abbot in despair, the knight in triumph, the justice laughing at his late friends and curtly refusing to return the cash they had paid to bring him there. His money counted, his release signed, the knight was a glad man again.

“The knight stert out of the dore,
Awaye was all his care,
And on he put his good clothynge,
The other he lefte there.

“He wente hym forthe full mery syngynge,
As men have tolde in tale,
His lady met hym at the gate,
At home in Wierysdale.

“‘Welcome, my lorde,’ sayd his lady;
‘Syr, lost is all your good?’
‘Be mery dame,’ said the knight,
‘And pray for Robyn Hode,

“That ever his soule be in blysse,
He holpe me out of my tene;
Ne had not be his kyndenesse,
Beggers had we ben.'”

The story wanders on, through pages of verse like the above, but we may fitly end it with a page of prose. The old singers are somewhat prolix; it behooves us to be brief.

A twelvemonth passed. The day fixed by the knight to repay his friend of the merry greenwood came. On that day the highway skirting the forest was made brilliant by a grand array of ecclesiastics and their retainers, at their head no less a personage than the fat cellarer of St. Mary’s.

Unluckily for them, the outlaws were out that day, on the lookout for game of this description, and the whole pious procession was swept up and taken to Robin Hood’s greenwood court. The merry fellow looked at his new guests with a smile. The knight had given the Virgin as his security,–surely the Virgin had taken him at his word, and sent these holy men to repay her debt.

In vain the high cellarer denied that he represented any such exalted personage. He even lied as to the state of his coffers. It was a lie wasted, for Little John served him as he had the knight, and found a good eight hundred pounds in the monk’s baggage.

“Fill him with wine of the best!” cried Robin. “Our Lady is a generous debtor. She pays double. Fill him with wine and let him go. He has paid well for his dinner.”

Hardly had the monk and his train gone, in dole and grief, before another and merrier train was seen winding under the great oaks of the forest. It was the knight on his way to pay his debt. After him rode a hundred men clad in white and red, and bearing as a present to the delighted foresters a hundred bows of the finest quality, each with its sheaf of arrows, with burnished points, peacock feathers, and notched with silver. Each shaft was an ell long.

The knight begged pardon. He had been delayed. On his way he had met a poor yeoman who was being ill-treated. He had stayed to rescue him. The sun was down; the hour passed; but he bore his full due to the generous lords of the greenwood.

“You come too late,” said Robin. “The Virgin, your surety, has been before you and paid your debt. The holy monks of St. Mary, her almoners, have brought it. They paid well, indeed; they paid double. Four hundred is my due, the other four hundred is yours. Take it, my good friend, our Lady sends it, and dwell henceforth in a state befitting your knightly station.”

Once more the good knight, Sir Richard of the Lee, dined with Robin Hood, and merry went the feast that day under the greenwood tree. The leaves of Sherwood still laugh with the mirth that then shook their bowery arches. Robin Hood dwells there no more, but the memory of the mighty archer and his merry men still haunts the woodland glades, and will while a lover of romance dwells in England’s island realm.