ried 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
pe