“Money, however little, always jingles merrily in our pockets,” said Robin, smiling. “Pray you tell me what you deem a little sum.”
“I have of my own ten silver pennies,” said the knight. “Here they are, and I wish they were ten times as many.”
He handed Little John his pouch, and Robin nodded carelessly.
“What say you to the total, Little John?” he asked as though in jest.
“‘Tis true enough, as the worthy knight hath said,” responded the big fellow gravely emptying the contents on his cloak.
Robin signed to Marian, who filled a bumper of wine for himself and his guest.
“Pledge me, Sir Knight!” cried the merry outlaw; “and pledge me heartily, for these sorry times. I see that your armor is bent and that your clothes are torn. Yet methinks I saw you at court, once upon a day, and in more prosperous guise. Tell me now, were you a yeoman and made a knight by force? Or, have you been a bad steward to yourself, and wasted your property in lawsuits and the like? Be not bashful with us. We shall not betray your secrets.”
“I am a Saxon knight in my own right; and I have always lived a sober and quiet life,” the sorrowful guest replied. “‘Tis true you have seen me at court, mayhap, for I was an excited witness of your shooting before King Harry—God rest his bones! My name is Sir Richard of the Lea, and I dwell in a castle, not a league from one of the gates of Nottingham, which has belonged to my father, and his father, and his father’s father before him. Within two or three years ago my neighbors might have told you that a matter of four hundred pounds one way or the other was as naught to me. But now I have only these ten pennies of silver, and my wife and son.”
“In what manner have you lost your riches?” asked Robin.
“Through folly and kindness,” said the knight, sighing. “I went with King Richard upon a crusade, from which I am but lately returned, in time to find my son—a goodly youth—grown up. He was but twenty, yet he had achieved a squire’s training and could play prettily in jousts and tournaments and other knightly games. But about this time he had the ill luck to push his sport too far, and did accidentally kill a knight in the open lists. To save the boy, I had to sell my lands and mortgage my ancestral castle; and this not being enough, in the end I have had to borrow money, at a ruinous interest, from my lord of Hereford.”