The rest of the party was composed of several noblemen, wealthy and powerful, but of less distinction than the two Earls we have mentioned, and evidently looking up to them as to their leaders; and besides these, was a distant cousin of the Earl of Monthermer, brought, as it were, to balance the presence of Richard de Ashby, though, to say the truth, if he more than outweighed that gentleman in wealth and respectability, he was very much his inferior in cunning and talents.
As a matter of course, the events which had just taken place upon the green formed the first subject of conversation with the personages assembled in the inn. The younger men only laughed over the occurrence. "You must get some fair lady to darn the hole in your hood, Richard," said the Lord Alured.
"I wonder," added another of the young noblemen, "that the arrow did not carry away one of those soft tresses."
"It might well have been called Scathelock, then," observed a third.
"It only disturbed a little of the perfume," rejoined Alured. The elder gentleman, however, treated the matter more seriously. The Earl of Ashby rated his kinsman with an angry brow for his licentiousness, and represented to him with great justice the evil of nobles bringing themselves into bad repute with the people.
"Do you not know," he said, "that at the present moment, between the king and his foreign minions on the one hand, and the people on the other, the English noblemen have to make their choice?--and, of course, it is by the people that we must stand. They are our support, and our strength, and we must avoid in all things giving them just cause of complaint. Scathelock?--Scathelock?--I have heard that name."
"You must have heard if often, my father," said Alured de Ashby. "It is the name of one of our good forest outlaws of Sherwood. I have seen the man twice in the neighbourhood of our own place, and though I did not mark this fellow with the arrow much, he has the same look and air."
"Seen him twice, and did not arrest him?" cried Richard de Ashby, with marked emphasis.
"Heaven forefend!" exclaimed Alured laughing. "What, arrest a good English yeoman, on account of a taste for the King's venison! If Harry would throw open his forests to us, and not give to proud Frenchmen and Spaniards rights that he denies to his English nobles, we might help him in such matters; but as it is, no free-forester shall ever be arrested by our people, or on our land."
The Earl of Monthermer and his nephew had both been silent, leaving the rebuke of Richard de Ashby to his own relations; for they well knew the jealousy of the nobles with whom they were leagued, and were anxious to avoid every matter of offence. The poor kinsman, however, had established a right to sneer even at the proud Earl of Ashby and his no less haughty son, upon grounds which at first sight would seem to afford no basis for such a privilege. His poverty and partial dependence upon them had taught them to endure much at his hands which they would have borne from no other man on earth; and he, keen-sighted in taking advantage of the higher as well as the lower qualities of all those he had to do with, failed not to render their forbearance a matter of habit, by frequently trying it as far as he dared to venture.