Robin Demands Payment
The outlaw chief seemed to be affronted by this suggestion, and replied, with a touch of pride in his manner: “Thanks for your proffer, Sir Knight, but, by Heaven! no man has ever yet deemed me a glutton. While I eat one dinner I am not accustomed to look eagerly for another—one is enough for me. But as for you, my guest, I think it only fitting that you should pay before you go; a yeoman was never meant to pay for a knight’s banquet.” The knight blushed, and looked confused for a moment, and then said: “True, Robin, and gladly would I reward you for my entertainment, but I have no money worth offering; even all I have would not be worthy of your acceptance, and I should be shamed in your eyes, and those of your men.”
“I have no money worth offering”
The Knight’s Poverty
“Is that the truth?” asked Robin, making a sign to Little John, who arose, and, going to the knight’s steed, unstrapped a small coffer, which he brought back and placed before his master. “Search it, Little John,” said he, and “You, sir, tell me the very truth, by your honour as a belted knight.” “It is truth, on my honour, that I have but ten shillings,” replied the knight, “and if Little John searches he will find no more.” “Open the coffer,” said Robin, and Little John took it away to the other side of the trysting oak, where he emptied its contents on his outspread cloak, and found exactly ten shillings. Returning to his master, who sat at his ease, drinking and gaily conversing with his anxious guest, Little John whispered: “The knight has told the truth,” and thereupon Robin exclaimed aloud: “Sir Knight, I will not take one penny from you; you may rather borrow of me if you have need of more money, for ten shillings is but a miserable sum for a knight. But tell me now, if it be your pleasure, how you come to be in such distress.” As he looked inquiringly at the stranger, whose blush had faded once, only to be renewed as he found his word of honour doubted, he noticed how thin and threadbare were his clothes and how worn his russet leather shoes; and he was grieved to see so noble-seeming a man in such a plight.
The Knight’s Story
Yet Robin meant to fathom the cause of the knight’s trouble, for then, perhaps, he would be able to help him, so he continued pitilessly: “Tell me just one word, which I will keep secret from all other men: were you driven by compulsion to take up knighthood, or urged to beg it by reason of the ownership of some small estate; or have you wasted your old inheritance with fines for brawling and strife, or in gambling and riotousness, or in borrowing at usury? All of these are fatal to a good estate.”