Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 98 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

l- ' __—— e+ on the ground at his feet, and two arrcws in his left hand beside the bow, while he fitted a third arrow to the string. Twang ! went the great bow again, and an- other man fell, when the rest made a desperate rush for the nearest trees, throwing themselves open to the terrible arrows of the enemy they had so rashly provoked. Before they could reach cover two more had fallen, and then the 3 earl turned to Scathelock. ‘Go thou and turn them out, but shoot not, I ‘charge thee,” Scathelock nodded and laughed, and ran off to the right,drawing bis bow ashe went. Very soon he lifted his weapon to threaten one of the foresters, and immediately the man broke cover and ran out, only to be transfixed by another arrow from the watchful and inexorable earl. ee and again was this maneuver repeat- ed, the poor wretches bellowing for mercy from behind their trees, but darting out to escape as soon as threatened, till the terrible earl had laid fourteen of his assailants on the sod, with little or no danger to bimself. Then the last man turned to flee, and ran like a deer down the highway toward Nottingham, just as Sir Roger man, full of impatience, came trotting back to see what had happened. The sheriff and his knave met face to face, just as the earl sent the last arrow in his quiver into the back of the last of 2% assailants, stretching him in death on the road. Then the new sher ff of Nottingham turned pele,.a8 he looked down the road and saw all he dead bodies lying there. He checked his horse, and was pulling on the rein to turn him, when Scathelock leaped out of the bushes, with arrow on the string, and called out to him: ** Hold, master sheriff, the Earl of Huntington needs thee.” ; But Sir Roger Warman could not stand the idea of facing the master he had betrayed. He dug his spurs into his charger, wrenched round its head, and made for Nottingham as fast as he could go. Not fast enough, however, to escape the ar- ‘row of Will Scarlet, who forgot his chief’s order in his eagerness to stop the flying sheriff. Twang! went the bow, and the red roan charger fell forward on knees and crown, and rolled over stone dead, the sheriff pitching on _ his head. When he recovered his senses he looked up, and beheld his dreaded master coming toward ‘him, quarter-staff in hand, while Scathelock looked on from the roadside with perfect un- . concern, ‘4 / Sir Roger Warman scrambled to his feet in a desperate hurry and turned toward Notting- ham. A moment’s reflection, however, con- vinced him that it was useless to flee; for his heavy armor would prevent him making any great speed, while he knew that the earl could run like a deer. © Therefore he took heart of grace, for he was not a coward, even if he was a scamp of the first water. He awaited the earl and drew his sword to meet him, while he flung his small tri- angular steel shield to the front. Then up came Huntington to meet his late steward, and recognized him in an instant. ‘Roger Warman, what dost thou here?” he asked, in a stern voice. ‘*T am sent by the orders of the prince to take thee, dead or alive!” answered the new sheriff, boldly. ‘‘ Lay down thine arms and surrender, for thou art outlawed at the suit of Bishop Gil- bert of Hereford, late Abbot of Fountain Ab- ? a For what sum?” demanded the earl, in the same tone. ‘‘For a thousand marks, lent thee by the monks of the Abbey,” replied the sheriff. ‘Take the quittance, then,” retorted the out- lawed noble, with a grim smile, and forthwith he advanced on the sheriff. It seemed as if the contest was all to be in fa- vor of the man in armor, whose sword and shield were confronted by nothing but a quar- ter-staff, but it quickly sbi that the odds were on the other side. untington, before he his fight, threw his bow, quiver, sword and buckler fo the ground, and then leaped for- ward, light and unincumbered, to the assault, whirling his long staff round his head. Whack! whack! crack! went the great quar- . ter-staff, and the sheriff caught the blows on his steel shield and sword every time. But they came with such tremendous force that they seemed to numb his arms, and he could make no assault in reply. The ear) leaped round his antagonist, whirling Robin Hood. a cp eS ee ee ee eee ee oer | other. The fourth blow caught the sheriff on | ington, and now none have word to say for the the right leg below the knee, and elicited a | poor man’s friend.” | | | ee ee or _ groan in spite of the mail hose that protected the limb. ** Aha! sand marks, foul traitor?” hissed the earl sav- agely, as he gave a re to one side, and fetched the other a second blow on the wrist of his sword-arm that sent his weapon flying. Roger Warman uttered a howl of agony and turned to flee, when the other ran after him, plying him with blow on blow, his armor re- sounding to the strokes of the great staff, the sheriff roaring for mercy but receiving none till at last he fell prone on his face in the hard road, and lay motionless as if dead. Then Huntington desisted from Pir and turned over the prostrate sheriff with his foot. ‘* This will do for to-day,” he said, sternly, to the fallen man, ‘Take thy life without the asking, but beware of the next time thou comest to take me. Go to thy masters, prince or bishop, which thou wilt, and tell them tnaat Robin Fitzooth will make them pay many a thousand marks ere he be done, lawry. They may think that they have the is at the wars; but mark me well, Roger War- man, he will come back—and then—beware!” So saying, he turned away to his weapons and slowly resumed them; while Scathelock, who attendant, went round to the dead bodies as they lay, stark and stiff, and coolly pulled the arrows from them where it was possible so to oO. Then the two men, the outlaw and the will- ing associate of all his perils, turned toward the reat forest of Sherwood and were quickly uried in its recesses. They knew that from henceforth, every man’s hand would be against them throughout all England, and yet they seemed to be nowise cast down, as they disap- peared under the green arches of the cak wood, Meanwhile the moines, sheriff, stiff and sore after the terrible drubbing he had received ite of his armor, slowly rose to his feet and hobbled off to Nottingham. Late that afternoon, a mournful procession visited the scene of the conflict, and decently -removed the bodies of the slain, who were taken fo Nottingham and buried in a common ‘ave. And thus commenced the outlawry of Robin Fitzooth, Earl of Huntington. CHAPTER IV. THE TOURNAMENT. LOXLEY CASTLE was all alive with merriment on the next day, for the prince, confident that he had forever got rid of the Earl of Hunting- ton, and desirous to please the Lady Marian, daughter of Lord Fitz Walter, owner of the cas- tle in which he was now a guest, had proclaim- ed a grand joust or tournament, with games for the common people, where the lady herself was to enact the part of ‘‘Queen of Love and Beauty,” or princess of the festival. : ‘‘ Ay, and for good cause,” responded a stout _fetlow, with shoulders of uncommon breadth, Dost thou feel the first of the thou- | | or this out- | whose floury coat bespoke him a niiller. ‘‘ Thou know’st, John Nailor, that without a groat in his purse King Richard would be no king; and the earl hath spent all hismoney. Let him lie on the earth like the rest of us, now.” ‘“Nay, by St. Dunstan,” observed a third; ‘fan I could help the good earl with a clothyard shaft in the breast of his foes, my name’s not Clym o’ the Clough but I'd stand outlawry with him, But what’s the use? The Normans have the land and the English may go hang for all them. Let us drink the prince’s ale, and cry Hey! for Plantagenet. e’s given us brave prizes for the oer iy At this moment the loud blasts of the trurr pets told that the lists were being opened. ‘‘Come, Miller,” said Clym o’ the Clough, throwing his bow over his shoulder; *‘and thou, too, Little John. There'll be no Shooting here till the great lords be through with their lance- play, and we may as well see what can be | seen.” kingdom safe, because the good King Richard | | | already seemed to have constituted himself his | ‘“They say there’s to be a brave show of knights,” responded the yeoman called * Little John ” (in sarcastic allusion to his great hight.) ‘‘ Let them ride and poke with their fine lances. I know a bow can send its shaft plumb through the best armor of the whole of them.” The millerlaughed at the tall fellow, as he retorted: ‘‘Keep thy brags till they’re needed, Little John. Mnow'lt have a chance to shoot ere this day’s out, or I am Much the. Liar instead of Much the Miller,” The friends pig asin to the lists and elbowed their way to the front of the assembly among the townsmen of Nottingham with compara: tive ease, they being all stout, lusty fellows, and evidently prompt to quarrel. Thus it resulted that when the great gate at the end of’ the lista flew open, and Prince John rode in with his train to began the tournament, the front seats all round the list were oceupied by lusty bow- men from the country-side, who carried their weapons with them, and waited for the shooting after the joust. | Prince John was followed by a train of knights, French and Norman, splendidly armed, cap-d-pie, and mounted on huge war-horses of the Norman or Flanders breed, heavy brutes that sustained the weight of their mail-clad ri ders with ease, but were incapable of any great exhibition of speed. The knights were divided into two parties wearing scarfs of red and blue respectively, an both circled around the lists in opposite direc. tions, passing below the canopy which shaded the Lady Marian and her attendants, and mak- ing low obeisances, to which the lady responded by a gracious inclination of the head, Marian Fitz Walter on this occasion looked as beautiful as it was possible to imagine any Wwo- inan on earth, and the fact of her beauty being of the bright blonde order made her conspicu- ous among the darker French ladies who sur- The drawbridge had been lying down across | the moat all day long, while the portcullis was wide open, and the warden of the gate dozed at his post, unmindful of the throngs passing in and out of the great court-yard. Tho villagers of Loxley, dressed in their best and bearing their bowsand arrows, were crowd- ing toward the butts, which had been set up on the meadows by the Trent, outside of the lists roper, where the tournament was to take place. he inclosure for the knights to engage was about two hundred yards in length by as many in breadth, and surrounded by gently-rising ground, which afforded a perfect view for all the spectators. Besides the men of Loxley, there were crowds from the nels bhoring villages, most of them from the broad lands once belong- ing to the outlawed earl, whose fate was the topic of general conversation among the popu- lace, as they crowded round the lists. “An outlawed earl is no better than an out- lawed churl,” quoth a yeoman of gigantic sta- ture, who stood leaning on his unstrung bow, amid a ~gn e friends, before the butts. ‘I mind when the folk blessed the Earl of Hunt- | *The graves of the fifteen foresters said in the old | legend to have been killed by Robin Hood were no fiction, They were discovered in 1796, when digging the cellar for a new house in the vicinity of the town | of Nottingham, and the skeletons were disposed in the order in which the old ballad places them *‘ all in arow.” This fact, recordedin the Gentleman's Maqa- zine at the end of the last century, confirms the the huge staff about his head, and threatening | actual existence of the celebrated outlaw, and one of © ‘ =. _ the man in armor, now on one side, now the his most remarkable deeds. rounded her. Her tresses of pale gold were balf concealed by a vail of silver tissue, and she was entirely robed in white and gold,so that her figure shone like a star from afar. But all the softness and beauty of her dress did not savor of insipidity when you looked at her sparklin mobile face, with its saucy little nose, rosebud mouth and blue eyes full of fire and spirit. The dress was that of a gracious and gentle queen, while the face was that of a saucy, willful little gipsy. ; As the Fried lowered his lance in salutation before her, Lady Marian bent her head with a mocking smile, and_spoke under her breath to her maid who sat behind her. “A gallant knight, truly, Joan, to court a distressed lady when her champion is away, and yet be mute as a mouse when he is near. t us see what he will do at the joust.” Then, as the other leader, Sir Humphrey dae Clee saluted, she bowed again and whis- ered: “Tis another gallant, Joan, who would rather ride with a blunted lance in a tourney, than fol: low the good king Richard to slay the Saracens before Jerusalem. Out on them both, and let the Norman hawks peck each other’s eyes for alt me. She spoke in the old Anglo-Saxon or English tongue, which was then avoided by the haughty Norman conquerors of England, who affected to despise it, and her language showed that she held rather with the race of her mother, who had been a Saxon heiress, than with her Nor- . man father in her sentiments. . \, j o } com OOKS;EOM =