and be you all ready when I shall call upon you. Now
God save you all. Amen."

EPILOGUE

In all sincerity there should be no more of this tale, seeing that we
have found ourselves at last come from beginning to end of Robin's
quarrelings with the Sheriff. Most histories end, and end properly, with
just such a marriage as we have seen.

Yet, to tell the truth, however strange and distressful, is the business
of a good historian; and so it must be written that in the end of it sad
days came again for Robin Hood. For five years he lived in peace and
prosperity, a faithful, loyal subject, having two sons born to him in
his home in Broadweald. Then came the plague, raging and furious, and
claimed amongst many victims Marian Countess of Huntingdon.

For a time Robin was as one distraught. He had no joy left to him. He
was as one without energy or hope; a miser robbed of his gold, suddenly
and cruelly. He gave his two boys into the charge of Geoffrey of
Nottingham, and went on a journey to London, there to beg of the King
that he might find him active employment, instead of being but one of a
guard of honor, as he and his men had so truly become.

Richard had already gone to France, and John was acting as Regent of
England in his absence. "Go, shoot some more of my brother's deer,"
sneered the Prince, having heard Robin impatiently. "Doubtless if you do
but slay enough of them he will make you Privy Councillor at the least
when he returns."

This great insult fired Robin's blood; he had been in a strange
distemper ever since the fatal day of his beloved's death. He answered
the disdainful Prince scornfully; and John, growing white with anger,
bade his guards to seize upon him.

Faithful Stuteley helped his master to win freedom from the prison into
which he had been flung; and, with the majority of his men, Robin
returned to the greenwood life. The King's guard was broken up, for the
King had no need of it, nor never would again.

Legends are told of Robin's scorned defiance of the laws, but they are
intangible and unauthentic. It is a sure thing, howbeit, that he did not
revert to Sherwood and Barnesdale as some aver, but rather took up his
quarters near Haddon Hall, in Derbyshire. There is a curious pile of
stones and rocks shown to this day as the ruins of Robin's Castle, where
the bold outlaw is believed to have lived and defied his enemies for a
year at least. Two stones stand higher than the others. The