hat friend?" replied the hermit; "that now is one of the questions
that is more easily asked than answered."

"Well, open the door," ordered the knight, "before he beat it from its
hinges."

The hermit speedily unbolted his portal and admitted Locksley, with his
two companions.

"Why, hermit," was the yeoman's first question as soon as he beheld the
knight, "what boon companion hast thou here?"

"A brother of our order," replied the friar, shaking his head; "we have
been at our devotions all night."

"He is a monk of the church militant," answered Locksley; "and there be
more of them abroad. I tell thee, friar, thou must lay down the
[v]rosary and take up the [v]quarter-staff; we shall need every one of
our merry men, whether clerk or layman. But," he added, taking a step
aside, "art thou mad--to give admittance to a knight thou dost not know?
Hast thou forgotten our agreement?"

"Good yeoman," said the knight, coming forward, "be not wroth with my
merry host. He did but afford me the hospitality which I would have
compelled from him if he had refused it."

"Thou compel!" cried the friar. "Wait but till I have changed this gray
gown for a green cassock, and if I make not a quarter-staff ring twelve
upon thy pate, I am neither true clerk nor good woodsman."

While he spoke thus he stript off his gown and appeared in a close
buckram doublet and lower garment, over which he speedily did on a
cassock of green and hose of the same color.

"I pray thee [v]truss my points," he said to Wamba, "and thou shalt have
a cup of sack for thy labor."

"[v]Gramercy for thy sack," returned Wamba; "but thinkest thou that it
is lawful for me to aid you to transmew thyself from a holy hermit into
a sinful forester?"

So saying, he accommodated the friar with his assistance in tying the
endless number of points, as the laces which attached the hose to the
doublet were then termed.

While they were thus employed, Locksley led the knight a little apart
and addressed him thus: "Deny it not, sir knight, you are he who played
so glorious a part at the tournament at Ashby."

"And what follows, if you guess truly, good yeoman?"

"For my purpose," said the yeoman, "thou shouldst be as well a good
Englishman as a good knight; for that which I have to speak of concerns,
indeed, the duty of every honest man, but is more especially that of a
true-born native of England."

"You can speak to no one," replied the knight, "to whom England