"Who gives this maid in marriage?" asked the Bishop, in due season.
"I do," said Robin, "I give her heartily to my good friend, Allan-a-Dale, and he who takes her from him shall buy her dearly."
CHAPTER XXI
They betook themselves to Barnesdale after the wedding, leaving my lord of Hereford gownless and fuming in the organ-loft of the little church at Plympton. His guard was variously disposed about the sacred edifice: two of the bowmen being locked up in the tiny crypt; three in the belfry, "to ring us a wedding peal," as Robin said, and the others in the vestry or under the choir seats in the chancel. The old baron had been forced to climb a high tree, and had been left in the branches of it feebly railing at them.
Then they all came back into Barnesdale, there to make a proper wedding-feast, after which Allan carried off his bride and her maids to his own home in the north, promising stoutly to return to them in due season.
The days came and went, and Monceux began to hope fondly that the outlaws had gone out of Sherwood. On the third morning after Allan's marriage the Bishop of Hereford came bursting into Nottingham with the old baron and the humiliated guard. The Sheriff's hopes were shattered under the furious indignation of the baron and my lord of Hereford.
It appeared that they had been released from their various positions of confinement during the evening of the marriage-day, and had forthwith hurried to the baron's castle. Thence they had set out for Allan's home in the east of the county, near to Southwell, a pretty place.
Arrived there, they had demanded reparation and the maid Fennel, and in order to be able to declare the marriage false, the Bishop had sent in a petition to the Pope whereto Mistress Fennel was led to place her hand in writing. Allan's answer was to tear the petition into little pieces and fling it at the feet of the messenger who had brought it.
Whereupon the Bishop had withdrawn and the baron had commenced an attack upon the place. After an hour or so of vain storming, Allan, at the head of a small band of retainers, had issued forth and mightily discomfited the baron and his men, beating them heartily out of the neighborhood of Southwell.