"Madam," answered the Bishop, turning round to her, "these are my men, and I have given them the order to guard this cottage."
"God-a-mercy!" swore the beldame, harshly. "Things have come to a pass in sooth when our homes may be treated like common jails. Take away this robber and your fellows from my house on the instant, or I will curse you all in eating and drinking and sleeping."
"Not so fast, mother," argued the Bishop, smiling easily at her simulated rage. "All this has been done by my orders, and is therefore in law."
The old woman clapped her hands impatiently. At the signal the greenwood men sprang out on all sides of the cottage. The Bishop saw himself and his men-at-arms trapped; but he determined to make a fight for it. "If one of you but stir an inch towards me, rascals," he cried, spitefully, "it shall be to sound the death of your master Robin Hood. My men have him here under their pikes, and I will command them to kill him forthwith. Further, he shall be killed an you do not at once disperse."
Then Robin stepped out before his men. He flung off the old crone's cap which he had worn so cleverly. "Come, kill me, then, lord," he called, cheerfully. "Here am I, waiting for your pikes and their pokes. Hasten to make sure business of it, for I am in no gentle humor."
The old woman, who, in the garb of Robin Hood, had been lying silent and still so long within the cottage, jumped up then quite nimbly. In all the bald absurdity of her disguise she came to the door of the cottage and looked forth. "Give you good-den, my lord Bishop," piped she; "and what make you at so humble a door as this? Do you come to bless me and give me alms?"
"Ay, marry, that does he!" said Stuteley, coming forward. "To you, mother, and to us also. You must know that my lord bears with him a bag of four hundred pieces from Sir Richard of the Lee, who did borrow this money from us to lend it to my lord."
"Now, by all the saints——" began the Bishop.
"They are watching you, brother," said Stuteley, impudently, "so be wary in your speech. Give into my hand the four hundred pieces which you took from the knight I have named. You cannot deny that you did take them from him in the June of last year?"
"The knight owed them to me, villain," said the Bishop, furiously. He saw that his men were outnumbered, and that all the outlaws had drawn bows aimed against them and him. A word not to the liking of these desperate fellows would loosen fifty horrid shafts upon him. "Sir Richard did owe them to me," he repeated, omitting the epithet.