The wind was from the south, sighing softly through the trees--the sun had gone down about half an hour--the moon was rising, though not yet visible to the eye, except to the watchers on castle towers, or the lonely shepherd on the mountain. The night was as warm as midsummer, though the year had now waned far; and in the sky there were none but light and fleecy clouds, which scarcely dimmed the far twinkling stars as they shone out in the absence of the two great rulers of the night and day. It was one of those sweet evenings which we would choose to wander through some fair scene with the lady that we love, looking for the moon's rising from behind the old ivy-clad ruin, and re-peopling the shady recesses of wood and dale with the fairy beings of old superstition, though they have long given place to the harsher realities of a state of society which has become, to use Rosalind's term, "a working-day world indeed."
Such was the night when, under the brown boughs of the wood, with yellow leaves overhead and long fern around, sat a party of some seven or eight stout men, dressed in the green garb which we have already described in another place. Their bows rested against the trees close by, their swords hung in the baldrics by their side, some horses were heard snorting and champing at no great distance, and a large wallet lay in the midst, from which the long-armed dwarf, Tangel, was drawing forth sundry articles of cold provision, together with two capacious leathern bottles and a drinking cup of horn. There were two persons there whom the reader already knows--the bold leader of the forest outlaws, and the old Earl of Monthermer--now, alas! an outlaw likewise. Though his wounds had been severe, and he had suffered much both in body and in mind, the old knight's spirit seemed still unquenched. On the contrary, indeed, with no weighty matters pressing on his mind, with the fate and fortune of others, nay, of his country itself, no longer hanging on his advice, it seemed as if a load had been removed from his bosom; and as he half sat, half lay, upon the turf, he could jest with the men around him more lightly than in his stately hours of power and influence.
"Poor hunting, Robin! poor hunting!" he said. "Now I would not have this day's sport recorded against us, as true foresters, for very shame."
"'Tis no want of craft, my good lord," replied Robin, "'tis the nearness of the court which drives all honest beasts away. We might have had bucks enough, but that they are rank just now."
"Like the age, Robin--like the age!" answered the Earl. "However, we must e'en make the best of our fate, and put in the bag what fortune chooses to send. There are hares enow, and a fine doe, though you were as tender of them as if they had been children."
"I never love to wing an arrow at a doe," said Robin Hood. "I know not why, they always look to me like women, and often do I lie in the spring time and see them trip along with their dainty steps, their graceful heads moving to and fro, and their bright black eyes looking as conscious as a pretty maid's at a May-day festival; and I think there must be some truth in the old story of men's souls sometimes taking possession of a beast's body."
"Not so often, Robin," rejoined the Earl, "as a beast's soul taking possession of a man's body. I could pick you out as goodly a herd from the court of England as ever trooped through the shades of Sherwood, or were driven out by the piping swineherd to eat acorns in the lanes by Southwell."
"Doubtless, doubtless, my lord," replied Robin; "men will make beasts of themselves in all places, while the honester four-legged things of the forest seem as if they wanted to gem up, manward. Why, down by that very place, Southwell, there is a fallow doe who knows me as well as if she were one of my band; she comes when I call her, if she be within hearing, and lets me rub her long hairy ears by the half-hour. Then what long talks will we have together! I ask her all sorts of questions; and she contrives to answer one way or another, till, if I be too saucy with her about her antlered loves, she butts at me with her round hornless head, and stamps her tiny foot upon the ground. You would say 'twas a very woman, if you saw her."
"'Tis a wonder that she has escaped without an arrow in her side," replied the Earl.
"Nay," cried Robin; "there is not a man in Sherwood or twenty miles round, who would pierce a hole in her brown bodice for all that he is worth. Every one knows Robin Hood's doe; and foul befal him that hurts her. But come, Tangel, what hast thou got there? 'Tis so dark, I cannot see."