"No, not that."
"Ah, but my heart forewarns me. He has been hurt by some beast? It is the season when the deer are wild."
"Master Fitzooth has been attacked by a great stag near by your home. That is all we know of it, child; and I give it you plainly at once, that you may hear the worst. Your mother has already gone to him, with the clerk and a full two score of men. For the captain of the foresters has kindly joined forces with mine own fellows; so that no further harm may befall."
"I'll follow her, sir. Give me leave to go."
"'Twere wiser to wait till morning, boy. What could you do now? Mayhap we fret ourselves too much, as 'tis. But you shall go, with Warrenton and your esquire, when morning is here. Ay, and I will come too; and we will bring with us the most skilful leech in Nottingham. I have already sent a messenger to him, an hour since, so soon as the dame had gone."
"I like not my mother having been sent for, sir. That shows me that the hurt is deadly. To think that I was playing so foolishly at the moment when I might have been of use to him!"
So rudely ended Robin's dreaming.
In the morning they set out for Locksley; the Squire with the leech, and six mules bearing such delicacies as old Gamewell's generous mind could think upon. Warrenton headed a full score of men, for fear of the outlaws; and they took a litter with them to bring Master Fitzooth to Gamewell.
The dame met them at the latch-gate which Robin knew so well. Her face was deathly pale and her mouth quivered as she tried to frame a welcome to them.
"Mother!" cried Robin, in anguished voice, running to her; and there was no need for further speech. In that one cry and in the expression of her mute, answering face, the truth was told and understood. No use to fight for Broadweald now; were it his a hundred times over, Robin could never do that with it which he in all his boyhood had planned. Hugh Fitzooth, Ranger of the Forest of Locksley, was dead.