Robin hastened to find his mother, that he might be relieved of his anxiety and be rid for the moment of the sight of the awful catastrophe of the fire. Warrenton and Stuteley rushed in together, at his command, to try to save the two remaining foresters; but it was a very forlorn hope. Warrenton in his just revenge had pushed things to their extreme limits: Master Ford and all his band had paid the utmost penalty of their failure to overcome this relentless old man.
Mistress Fitzooth had secured refuge and was now much calmer. She embraced her son and wept over him in joy at this reunion. Robin could see, however, that she was indeed much overwrought by these troubles. She had not yet recovered from the loss of her husband.
They stayed with these poor people, who found room for them somehow, out of sheer charity, for neither Robin nor the dame had any money. It was a bitter business, in sooth: and next day Robin, finding his mother far from well, humbled himself to beg assistance from the Squire. He despatched the letter by Warrenton, and then patiently set himself to wait a reply.
Also, he determined to seek an audience with the Prince. His home had been burned, his small patrimony gone: he had now no means of keeping himself and the dame from starvation save by living on another man's bread.
The clerk, his one tried friend, was gone—no one knew where.
The Prince would surely yield him the right to be Ranger at Locksley in his father's place! The house had been given to dead Hugh Fitzooth by Henry, the King.
An uneasy feeling took possession of Robin, for Warrenton had defied and overcome the Sheriff's man when he had been properly empowered to expel mother and son from Locksley, and there were seven dead men, nay eight, to be accounted for—and they were all of them King's Foresters.
Montfichet answered him by sending a purse of money and a curt letter saying that Mistress Fitzooth was to come to Gamewell, where for the rest of her days she would always find a home. For Robin he could do nothing: already the Sheriff had drawn up a proclamation of outlawry against him, setting the price of a hundred crowns upon him, living or dead.