Monceux went up to him and bade him speak out.
Stuteley said, in a sad tone: "Sheriff, seeing that I must die to-day, grant me this one boon, that I may not be hanged upon a gallows-tree, but rather that I die with my sword in my hand, fighting you and all your men to the last."
The Sheriff laughed coarsely: "Not so, my man; you shall die instead a shameful death, and after you your master, Robin Hood, that false butcher, so soon as I have him fast."
"That you will never do," answered Stuteley, with prophecy, in his weak voice. "But unbind my hands, Sheriff, for your soul's sake, and let me meet my end valiantly."
"To the gallows with him!" roared Monceux, giving the sign to the executioner; and Stuteley was hustled into the rude cart which was to bear him under the gallows until his neck had been leashed. Then it would be drawn roughly away and the unhappy man would swing out over the tail of it into another world.
Two fellows had great knives with them ready to cut him down, and quarter his body whilst life was in it, as the cruel sentence had ordained.
"Let me, at the least, shrive this man's soul ere it be hurled into eternity," said the palmer, stepping forward.
Monceux's face grew black with rage; and yet he scarcely liked to refuse, for fear it should injure him too much in the eyes of the people. "Perform the duty quickly then, Sir Priest," he snarled; and then rode back to Carfax. "Watch the palmer narrowly," he told him, "and do you secure him afterwards. Methinks he is some ally of these rascal outlaws; and, in any case, we shall do no harm in questioning him."
The palmer had hardly begun to string his beads when Little John commenced to elbow a path for himself through the crowd. He roughly thrust the soldiers aside as if they had been so many children, and came up to the edge of the cart. "I pray you, Will, take leave of your true friend here before you die," cried Little John.
The palmer had fallen back at his approach; and stood in some hesitancy. In a moment Monceux saw what happened. "Seize that man!" he shouted to his pikemen. "He is that villain who did rob us of our gold plate, who nearly slew Roger, our cook. He is of the band—seize him; and he too shall hang!"