Forest Days. G. P. R. James

of more important things;" but it being announced that supper was well-nigh ready, the Earl of Ashby, who had an affection for the good things of this life, proposed that any farther conversation should be put off till after that meal. The other Earl, knowing that his placability depended much upon the condition of his stomach, agreed to the suggestion; and after the ceremony of washing hands had been performed, the supper was served and passed over as such proceedings usually did in those days, with huge feeding on the part of several present, and much jesting on the part of the younger men. A good deal of wine was also drank, notwithstanding a caution from the Earl of Monthermer to be moderate. But moderation was little known at that time. Malvoisie was added to Bordeaux, and the spiced wine, then called claret, succeeded the Malvoisie; a cup of hippocras was handed round to sweeten the claret, and the Earl of Ashby fell asleep at the very moment the conference should have begun.

      CHAPTER VI.

      I cannot help grieving that amongst all the changes which have taken place,--amongst all the worlds, if I may so call them, which have come and gone in the lapse of time, the forest world should have altogether departed, leaving scarcely greater or more numerous vestiges of its existence than those that remain of the earth before the Flood. The green and bowery glades of the old forest, their pleasant places of sport and exercise, the haunts of the wild deer, the wolf, and the boar, the fairy-like dingles and dells, the woodcraft that they witnessed, the sciences, and the characters that were peculiar to themselves, have now, alas! passed away from most of the countries of Europe, and have left scarcely a glen where the wild stag can find shelter, or where the contemplative man can pause under the shade of old primeval trees, to reflect upon the past or speculate upon the future. The antlered monarch of the wood is now reduced to a domestic beast, in a walled park; and the man of thought, however much he may love nature's unadorned face, however much he may feel himself cribbed and confined amongst the works of human hands, must shut his prisoner fancies within the bounds of his own solitary chamber, unless he is fond to indulge them by the side of the grand but monotonous ocean. The infinite variety of the forest is no longer his: it belongs to another age, and to another class of beings.

      In the times I write of, it was not so, and the greater part of every country in Europe was covered with rich and ancient wood; but, perhaps, no forest contained more to interest or to excite than that of merry Sherwood--comprising within itself, as the reader knows, a vast extent of very varied country, sweeping round villages, and even cities, and containing, in its involutions, many a hamlet, the inhabitants of which derived their sustenance from the produce of the forest ground.

      The aspect of the wood itself was as different in different places as it is possible to conceive. In some spots the trees were far apart, with a wide expanse of open ground, covered by low brushwood, or the shall shrub bearing the bilberry; in others, you came to a wide extent, covered with nothing but high fern and old scrubbed hawthorn trees; but throughout a great part of the forest the sun seldom if ever penetrated, during the summer months, to the paths beneath, so thick was the canopy of green leaves above, while those paths themselves were generally so narrow that in many of them two men could not walk abreast.

      There were other and wider ways, indeed, through the wood, some of them cart roads, for the accommodation of woodmen and carriers, some of them highways from one neighbouring town to another: but the latter were not very numerous or very much frequented--many a tale being told of travellers lightened of their baggage, in passing through Sherwood; and, to speak the truth, no one could very well say, at that time, who and what were the dwellers in the forest, or their profession; so that those who loved not strange company, kept to the more open country if they could.

      Nevertheless, it was a beautiful ride across almost any part of the woodland, offering magnificent changes of scene at every step, and the people of those times were not so incapable of enjoying it as has been generally supposed; but still, with all the tales of outlaws and robbers which were then afloat, it required a stout determination, or a case of great necessity, to impel any of the citizens of the neighbouring towns to make a trip across the forest in the spring or autumn of the year. Those who did so, usually came back with some story to tell, and some, indeed, brought home stripes upon their shoulders and empty bags. The latter, however, were almost always of particular classes. Rich monks and jovial friars occasionally fared ill; the petty tyrants of the neighbouring shire ran a great risk, if they trusted themselves far under the green leaf; the wealthy and ostentatious merchant might sometimes return rather lighter than he went; but the peasant, the honest franklin, the village curate, the young, and women of all degrees, had generally very little to relate, except that they had seen a forester here, or a forester there, who gave them a civil word, and bade God speed them, or who aided them, in any case of need, with skilful hands and a right good will.

      Thus there was evidently a strong degree of favouritism shown in the dealings of the habitual dwellers in the greenwood with the various classes of travellers who passed through on business or on pleasure. But, nevertheless, it was the few who complained, and the many who lauded, so that the reputation of the merry men of Sherwood was high amongst all the inferior orders of society at the time when this tale begins.

      So much was necessary to be said, to give the reader any idea of the scene into the midst of which we must now plunge, leaving Barnsdale behind us, and quitting Yorkshire for Nottingham.

      It was about two o'clock, on the second of May, then, that a party of horsemen reached a spot in the midst of Sherwood, where the road--after having passed for nearly two miles through a dense part of the wood, which the eye could not penetrate above fifteen or twenty yards on either side--ran down a slight sandy descent, and entered upon a more open scene, where the trees had been cleared away not many years before, and where some two hundred acres of ground appeared covered with scattered brushwood and bilberry bushes, sloping down the side of a wide hill, at the bottom of which the thick wood began again, extending in undulating lines for many a mile beneath the eye of the traveller.

      The number of the journeyers was five; and they pulled in the rein to let their horses drink at a clear stream which crossed the road, and bubbling onward, was soon lost amongst the bushes beyond. Four of them were dressed as yeomen attached to some noble house; for although liveries, according to the modern acceptation of the word, were then unknown, and the term itself applied to quite a different thing, yet the habit was already coming in, of fixing a particular badge or cognizance upon all the followers or retainers of great noblemen, as well as of kings, whereby they might know each other in any of the frequent affrays which took place in those times. Sometimes it was fixed upon the breast, sometimes upon the back, sometimes upon the arm, where it appeared in the present instance. Each of the yeomen had a sword and buckler, a dagger on the right side, and a bow and a sheaf of arrows on the shoulders; and all were strong men and tall, with the Anglo-Saxon blood shining out in the complexion.

      The fourth personage was no other than Ralph Harland, the stout young franklin, of whom we have already spoken. He, too, was well armed with sword and buckler, though he bore no bow. Besides the usual dagger, however, he wore, hanging by a green cord from his neck, a long, crooked, sharp-pointed knife, called in those days an anelace, which was, I believe, peculiar to the commons of England and Flanders, and which was often fatally employed in the field of battle in stabbing the heavy horses of the knights and men-at-arms.

      The horses of this party were evidently tired with a long, hot ride, and the horsemen stopped, as I have said, to let their beasts drink in the stream before they proceeded onward. As they pulled up, a fat doe started from the brushwood about thirty yards distant, and bounded away towards the thicker parts of the forest, and at the same moment a loud, clear, mellow voice, exclaimed--"So, ho, madam! nobody will hurt you in the month of May! Give you good day, sirs!--whither are ye going?"

      The eyes of all but young Harland had been following the deer, and his had been bent, with a look of sad and stern abstraction, upon the stream, but every one turned immediately as the words were uttered; and there before them on the road, stood the speaker. How he came there, however, no one could tell, for the moment before, the highway was clear for a quarter of a mile, and there seemed no bush or tree in the immediate neighbourhood sufficiently large to conceal a full grown man.

      The