"What, my noble Benjamin?" I exclaimed.
"No, it's me!" answered the redoubtable Ben. "'E said I was to give you this an' tell you, 'Life an' death!'" As he spoke he held out a roll of paper tied about the middle with a boot lace; which done, the round head grinned, nodded, and disappeared from my ken. Unwinding the boot lace, I spread out the paper and read the following words, scrawled in pencil:
"Hi the to the Blarsted Oke and all will be forgiven. Come back to your luving frends and bigones shall be bigones. Look to the hole in the trunk there of.
"Sined,
"ROBIN, Outlaw and Knight.
"P.S.--I mean where i hid her stockings--you no."
I stood for some time with this truly mysterious document in my hand, in two minds what to do about it; if I went, the chances were that I should run against the Imp, and there would be a second leave-taking, which in my present mood I had small taste for. On the other hand, there was a possibility that something might have transpired which I should do well to know.
And yet what more could transpire? Lisbeth had made her choice, my dream was over, to-morrow I should return to London--and there was an end of it all; still----
In this pitiful state of vacillation I remained for some time, but in the end curiosity and a fugitive hope gained the day, and, taking my cap, I sallied forth.
It was, as Stevenson would say, "a wonderful night of stars," and the air was full of their soft, quivering light, for the moon was late and had not risen as yet. As I stepped from the inn door, somebody in the tap-room struck up "Tom Bowling" in a rough but not unmusical voice; and the plaintive melody seemed somehow to become part of the night.