That's a most happy thought! I have not heard
A merrier word than dinner all this day.
I am well-nigh starved.
ROBIN
Will you not raise your visor
And let us know to whose good knightly hand
We are so beholden?
KNIGHT
Sir, you will pardon me,
If, for a little, I remain unknown.
But, tell me, are you not that Robin Hood
Who breaks the forest laws?
ROBIN
That is my name.
We hold this earth as naturally our own
As the glad common air we breathe. We think
No man, no king, can so usurp the world
As not to give us room to live free lives,
But, if you shrink from eating the King's deer—
KNIGHT
Shrink? Ha! ha! ha! I count it as my own!
[The Foresters appear, preparing the dinner on a table of green turfs, beneath a spreading oak. Marian and Jenny appear at the door of the hut. Jenny goes across to help at the preparations for dinner.]