nostrils would soon
snuff the spicy air of the woodlands once again. But there is many a
slip betwixt the cup and the lip, and this Robin was to find. For thus
it was:

When the King's men found themselves foiled at Saint Albans, and that
Robin and his men were not to be found high nor low, they knew not what
to do. Presently another band of horsemen came, and another, until all
the moonlit streets were full of armed men. Betwixt midnight and dawn
another band came to the town, and with them came the Bishop of
Hereford. When he heard that Robin Hood had once more slipped out of
the trap, he stayed not a minute, but, gathering his bands together, he
pushed forward to the northward with speed, leaving orders for all the
troops that came to Saint Albans to follow after him without tarrying.
On the evening of the fourth day he reached Nottingham Town, and there
straightway divided his men into bands of six or seven, and sent them
all through the countryside, blocking every highway and byway to the
eastward and the southward and the westward of Sherwood. The Sheriff of
Nottingham called forth all his men likewise, and joined with the
Bishop, for he saw that this was the best chance that had ever befallen
of paying back his score in full to Robin Hood. Will Scarlet and Little
John and Allan a Dale had just missed the King's men to the eastward,
for the very next day after they had passed the line and entered
Sherwood the roads through which they had traveled were blocked, so
that, had they tarried in their journeying, they would surely have
fallen into the Bishop's hands.

But of all this Robin knew not a whit; so he whistled merrily as he
trudged along the road beyond Stanton, with his heart as free from care
as the yolk of an egg is from cobwebs. At last he came to where a
little stream spread across the road in a shallow sheet, tinkling and
sparkling as it fretted over its bed of golden gravel. Here Robin
stopped, being athirst, and, kneeling down, he made a cup of the palms
of his hands, and began to drink. On either side of the road, for a long
distance, stood tangled thickets of bushes and young trees, and it
pleased Robin's heart to hear the little birds singing therein, for it
made him think of Sherwood, and it seemed as though it had been a
lifetime since he had breathed the air of the woodlands. But of a
sudden, as he thus stooped, drinking, something hissed past his ear, and
struck with a splash into the