“Fare ye well, my masters,” he said finally turning the other way; “and when next I come along the Barnesdale road, I hope you will be able to tell gold from meal dust!”
With this he departed, an easy victor, and again went whistling on his way, while the three outlaws rubbed the meal out of their eyes and began to catch their breath again.
As soon as they could look around them clearly, they beheld Robin Hood leaning against a tree trunk and surveying them smilingly. He had recovered his own spirits in full measure, on seeing their plight.
“God save ye, gossips!” he said, “ye must, in sooth, have gone the wrong way and been to the mill, from the looks of your clothes.”
Then when they looked shamefaced and answered never a word, he went on, in a soft voice,
“Did ye see aught of that bold beggar I sent you for, lately?”
“In sooth, master,” responded Much the miller’s son, “we heard more of him than we saw him. He filled us so full of meal that I shall sweat meal for a week. I was born in a mill, and had the smell of meal in my nostrils from my very birth, you might say, and yet never before did I see such a quantity of the stuff in so small space.”
And he sneezed violently.
“How was that?” asked Robin demurely.
“Why we laid hold of the beggar, as you did order, when he offered to pay for his release out of the bag he carried upon his back.”