“Nay,” said mine host, “Robin will have it that some further evil is upon us—tho’ methinks we have got our fill and to spare with this drought—ay, and ’twas at thy house, Dickon, he saw the corpse-light.”
“Better a corpse-light than six open mouths, and naught to fill them,” said Dickon surlily. “Whither away, Robin? ’Tis not far this beast will travel.”
“Right thou art, but my master will turn an honest penny with the carcass,” answered the little man; “give me my reckoning, friend John. I must needs haste if I would see the Forester’s ere nightfall.”
He pulled out a few small coins and a gold piece. When Dickon saw it his eyes gleamed. Robin paid the reckoning and put the piece in his cheek.
“Hard-earned money—’tis blood out of a stone to draw wages from my master. Better it should light in my belly than in a rogue’s pocket. ’Tis as well for me that John o’ th’ Swift-foot swings at the cross-roads. Godden, my masters!” And leading his weary beast, he took the road that skirted the forest.
The moon was at full, and he had yet a good stretch of lonely way before him, when the horse stumbled and fell and would not rise.
“A murrain on the beast!” muttered Robin angrily, tugging in vain at the creature on whom death had taken pity. “I must e’en leave him by the wayside and tell Richard what hath befallen.”
He stooped to loose the halter, and as he bent to his task a man slipped from the shadow of the hedge into the quiet moonlight. There was a thud, a dull cry, and Robin fell prone across the horse’s neck—a pace beyond him in the moonlight shone the gleam of gold.
Next day Dickon’s child died, ay, and the other five followed with scant time between the buryings. Another had fathered them and filled the gaping mouths; but men shuddered at his care, for it was the Black Death that they had deemed far from them.
Pale and woebegone they clustered on the green. News had come of Robin—he was dead when they found him—but no man gave heed. Death was in the air, death held them safe in walls they might not scale. The heavens were brass, food failed for man and beast, God and man alike had forsaken them. The forest lay one side, the river, now but a shallow sluggish stream, lay the other; ’twas a cleft stick and the springe tightened.