“‘Ay marry, that will he,’ replied Will Scarlet; ‘many’s the buck he has killed at half a mile.’
“‘I’ll never draw bow again,’ returned the chief, ‘if a lazy friar once beats me in archery. What say ye, my friends, shall we find out this gallant priest?’
“‘Make him join us,’ cried several voices.
“‘To-morrow at earliest dawn be ready to attend me,’ said Robin Hood; and with Little John by his side, he left the meadow.
“The foresters then parted into groups and strolled away, some to the banks of the stream, others to the darkening woods, while a few, not yet content as to their inferiority, sought again to try their speed against the victors.
ROBIN HOOD AND THE FRIAR.
“Upon the next morning, ere the sun had risen above the horizon, Robin Hood started from his couch, and armed himself. He put on his helmet and breast-plate, he took up his good broadsword, his long tried buckler, and his trustiest bow, and then placing his bugle-horn to his lips, he played so loud a réveille that his men, frightened from their slumbers, seized their nearest weapons, as if an army had appeared against them. A few gentler notes made them remember the appointed time, and soon fifty bold youths attended the summons of their master. He bade them hasten to Fountains’ Dale by the shortest path, but on no account to show themselves till he had sounded three blasts upon his bugle; and with a light foot and merry heart he sprang into his horse’s saddle, and set out to encounter the renowned friar.
“This friar, whose fame was spread far and wide, had once been an inmate and one of the brethren of Fountains’ Abbey, but his irregular course of life and lawless pursuits had brought down upon him the wrath of the superior, and he had been expelled. Friar Tuck, so was he called, bore his disgrace boldly; he immediately retired to the forests, and there built himself a rude hut of the large stones with which the country abounded, thatching it with branches of trees. There he lived in solitude, gaining from the country people, who frequently came to him for religious consolation, a character of the greatest sanctity. The friar took care to turn this to his advantage, and many were the presents of butter, milk, and sometimes of a more enlivening liquid, that he received. But these did not constitute his chief means of livelihood; early in the morning the friar had more than once been seen with a good long bow in his hand, and a quiver of arrows at his side, and a report had gone abroad that few could equal him in the use of this favourite weapon.
“The friar was a tall burly man, at least six feet high, with a broad expanded chest, and a muscular arm that the sturdiest blacksmith might have been proud of. He usually wore a dark mulberry coloured cloak that reached nearly to his ancles, and girded it with a black woollen rope, the two ends of which hung down before him, about half a yard in length. On the morning upon which Robin Hood had determined to discover him, from some unaccountable reason friar Tuck had put a steel cap upon his head, and a corslet upon his breast, and with his long oaken staff in his hand had rambled to the margin of the fair river Skell, where he stood gazing steadfastly upon the waves, as they rippled by. Presently he heard the sound of a horse’s step, and turning, he beheld within a few feet of him an armed horseman. The stranger quickly dismounted, and fastening his steed by his bridle, to the branch of a tree, advanced towards him.