And he left his good vow in the forest behind:
For its woods out of sight were his vow out of mind,
With the friar of Rubygill.

In lonely hut himself he shut,
The friar of Rubygill;
Where the ghostly elf absolved himself,
To follow his own good will:
And he had no lack of canary sack,
To keep his conscience still.
And a damsel well knew, when at lonely midnight
It gleamed on the waters, his signal-lamp-light:
"Over! over!" she warbled with nightingale throat,
And the friar sprung forth at the magical note,
And she crossed the dark stream in his trim ferryboat,
With the friar of Rubygill."

"Look you now," said Robin, "if the friar does not blush. Many strange
sights have I seen in my day, but never till this moment did I see a
blushing friar."

"I think," said the friar, "you never saw one that blushed not, or
you saw good canary thrown away. But you are welcome to laugh if it so
please you. None shall laugh in my company, though it be at my expense,
but I will have my share of the merriment. The world is a stage,
and life is a farce, and he that laughs most has most profit of the
performance. The worst thing is good enough to be laughed at, though
it be good for nothing else; and the best thing, though it be good for
something else, is good for nothing better."

And he struck up a song in praise of laughing and quaffing, without
further adverting to Marian's insinuated accusation; being, perhaps,
of opinion, that it was a subject on which the least said would be the
soonest mended.

So passed the night. In the morning a forester came to the friar, with
intelligence that Prince John had been compelled, by the urgency of
his affairs in other quarters, to disembarrass Nottingham Castle of
his royal presence. Our wanderers returned joyfully to their
forest-dominion, being thus relieved from the vicinity of any more
formidable belligerent than their old bruised and beaten enemy the
sheriff of Nottingham.

CHAPTER XVII

Oh! this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bribe
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk.--Cymbeline.

So Robin and Marian dwelt and reigned in the forest, ranging the glades
and the greenwoods from the matins of the lark to the vespers of the
nightingale, and administering natural justice according to Robin's
ideas of rectifying the inequalities of human condition: raising
genial dews fr