"What if I could show you the King's dismissal of your father?" snarled the other.
"If you could show it to me, you would," answered Robin, calmly.
"Nevertheless, I will show it to you, insolent," cried Master Ford, losing his temper. "In Nottingham we can play at other games than those you saw at the Fair, Robin o' th' Hood," he went on, furiously, and giving Robin this name out of desire to prick him.
To young Robin the epithet recalled a sudden vision of the maid Fitzwalter and her queer little toss of her curls as she had christened him. Ford must have been near to have overheard it. So was there double insult in his words.
Robin looked him full in the face, and then turned contemptuously from him. "Play all the games you know, friend," said he: and walked into the house.
The forester bit his lip in vexation. He scarce knew how to act. The Sheriff had told him to take forcible possession of the house, but this might only be done now after a sanguinary encounter. For Warrenton, the Squire of Gamewell's man, was there, and had eyed him malevolently, and talk with the Locksley foresters had shown them to be now ranged on Robin's side.
After waiting for three hours, Master Ford set about a return into Nottingham, meaning to ask for permission to bring back the Sherwood foresters with him to Locksley. In his return he was met by Will o' th' Green and his men near Copmanhurst, was beaten and robbed of all he had, and sent back in ignominious fashion into Nottingham town—he and all the ten men that the Sheriff had sent with him!
Master Ford made a fine story of this for the greedy ears of Mistress Monceux. She had always disliked the maid Fitzwalter; and had now seen a chance to injure her through Robin. Since he had given this girl the arrow which he had denied to her, the Sheriff's daughter, there could be no doubt that strong friendship, at the least, existed between them, so that any blow at Robin must recoil upon Mistress Fitzwalter.
Demoiselle Monceux therefore credited largely Master Ford's story.
"Go to the hall, and there await my father, Master Ford," said Mistress Monceux, at last. "I will speak again with him when he has returned from Gamewell. He is there now on your behalf, in a way," she added, meaningly.