Forest Days. G. P. R. James

personage who accosted them was certainly full-grown, and very well grown, too. He was in height about five feet eleven, but not what could be called large in the bone; at least, the proportion of the full and swelling muscle that clothed his limbs made the bone seem small. His foot, too, was less than might have been expected from his height; and though his hand was strong and sinewy, the shape was good, and the fingers were long. His breadth over the chest was very great; but he was thin in the flank, and small in the waist; and when his arm hung loosely by his side, the tip of his middle finger reached nearly to his knee. His countenance was a very fine one; the forehead high and broad, but with the brow somewhat prominent above the eyes, giving a keen and eagle-like look to a face in every other respect frank and gentle. His well rounded chin, covered with a short curling beard, of a light brown hue, was rather prominent than otherwise, but all the features were small and in good proportion; and the clear blue eye, with its dark-black eyelashes, and the arching turn of the lip and mouth, gave a merry expression to the whole, rather reckless, perhaps, but open and free, and pleasant to the beholder.

      In dress he was very much like the foresters whom we have before described; he wore upon his head a little velvet cap, with a gold button in the front, and a bunch of woodcock's feathers therein. He had also an image, either in gold or silver gilt, of St. Hubert on horseback, on the front of the cross-belt in which his sword was hung. The close-fitting coat of Lincoln green, the tight hose of the same, the boots of untanned leather, disfigured by no long points, the sheaf of arrows, the bow, the sword, and bracer, were all there; and, moreover, by his side hung a pouch of crimson cloth called the gipciere, and, resting upon it, a hunting horn, tipped with silver. As the fashion of those days went, his apparel was certainly not rich, but still it was becoming, and had an air of distinction which would have marked him out amongst men more splendidly habited than himself.

      Such was the person who stood before the travellers when they looked round, but taken by surprise, none of the party spoke in answer to his question.

      "What!" he said, again, with a smile, "as silent as if I had caught you loosing your bow against the king's deer in the month of May? I beseech you, fair gentlemen, tell me who you are that ride merry Sherwood at noon, for I cannot suffer you to go on till I know."

      "Cannot suffer us to go on?" cried Blawket. "You are a bold man to say so to five."

      "I am a bold man," replied the forester, "as bold as Robin Rood; and I tell you again, good yeomen, that I must know."

      What might have been Blawket's reply, who shall say? for--as we have before told the reader--he had some idea of his own consequence, and no slight reliance on his own vigour; but Ralph Harland interposed, exclaiming, "Stay, stay, Blawket, this must be the man we look for to give us aid. I have seen his face before, I am well-nigh sure. Let me speak with him."

      "Ay, ay, they show themselves in all sorts of forms," answered his companion, while Harland dismounted and approached the stranger. "One of them took me in as a ploughman, and now we have them in another shape."

      In the meanwhile, Harland had approached the forester, and had put into his hand a small strip of parchment, in shape and appearance very much like the ticket of a trunk in modern days. It was covered on one side with writing in a large, good hand, but yet it would have puzzled the wit of the best decipherer of those or of our own times to make out what it meant, without a key. It ran as follows:--

      "Scathelock, number one, five, seven, to the man of Sherwood." Then came the figure of an arrow, and then the words, "A friend, as by word of mouth. Help, help, help!"

      This was all, but it seemed perfectly satisfactory to the eye that rested upon it, for he instantly crushed the parchment in his hand, saying, "I thought so!--Go on for half a mile," he continued; "follow the man that you will find at the corner of the first path. Say nothing to him, but stop where he stops, and take the bits out of your horses' mouths, for they must feed ere they go on. Away!" he added; "away! and lose no time."

      Ralph Harland sprang upon his horse's back again, and rode on with the rest, while the forester took a narrow path across the brushwood, which led to the thicker wood above. They soon lost sight of him, however, as they themselves rode on; but when they had gone nearly half a mile, they heard the sound of a horn in the direction which he had taken.

      A moment or two after, they came to a path leading to the right, and looking down it, saw a personage, dressed in the habit of a miller's man, leaning upon a stout staff in the midst of the narrow road. The instant he beheld them he turned away, and walked slowly onward, without turning to see whether they noticed or not. Harland led the way after him, however, for the path would not admit two abreast, and the rest followed at a walk.

      They thus proceeded for somewhat more than a mile, taking several turns, and passing the end of more than one path, each so like the other, that the eye must have been well practised in woodcraft which could retrace the way back to the high road again. At length they came to a little square cut in the wood, about the eighth part of an acre in extent, at the further corner of which was a hut built in the simplest manner, with posts driven into the ground, and thatched over, while the interstices were filled with flat layers of earth, a square hole being left open for a window, and one somewhat longer appearing for the door.

      Here their guide paused, and turning round, looked them over from head to foot without saying a word.

      "Ha! miller, is this your mill?" said Blawket, as they rode up.

      "Yes," answered the stranger, in a rough tone, shaking his staff at the yeoman; "and this is my mill-wheel, which shall grind the bran out of any one who asks me saucy questions."

      "On my life, I should like to try!" cried Blawket, jumping down from his horse.

      "Hush--hush!" cried Harland; "you know we were told not to speak to him."

      "And a good warning, too," said the other. "You will soon have somebody to speak to, and then pray speak to the purpose."

      "Ah! Madge she was a merry maid,

       A merry maid, with a round black eye;

       And everything Jobson to her said,

       The saucy jade she ask'd him, 'Why?'

      "'I'll deck thee out in kirtles fine,

       If you'll be mine,' he said, one day;

       'I'll give you gold, if you'll be mine.'

       But 'Why?' was all the maid would say.

      "'I love you well, indeed I do,'

       The youth he answered, with a sigh;

       'To you I ever will be true.'

       The saucy girl still ask'd him, 'Why!'

      "But one day, near the church, he said,

       'The ring is here--the priest is nigh,

       Come, let us in, Madge, and be wed;'

       But then she no more ask'd him, 'Why?'"

      So sung the miller, with an easy, careless, saucy air, leaning his back against the turf wall of the hut, and twirling his staff round between his finger and thumb, as if prepared to tell the clock upon the head of any one who approached too near.

      There was no time for any farther questions, however: for he had scarcely finished the last stave, when the forester whom they had first met appeared from behind the hut, with a brow that looked not quite so free and gay as when the travellers had last seen him. "Come--come, master miller," he said, "you should have to do with corn. Get some oats for these good men's horses, for they must speed back again as fast as they came."

      "They will find oats enough in the hut, Robin," replied the other; "but I will do your bidding however, though I be a refractory cur."

      Almost at the same moment that the above reply was made, the young franklin was speaking likewise.

      "Go back again faster than we came?" he said. "I shall not feel disposed to do that, unless----"

      "Unless I show you good cause," interrupted the forester. "But I