Hoots of derision from his captors greeted this assertion.
"Villain! Thou liest in thy teeth! Make not thy odious crime worse by perjury, or thou shalt fare ill at our hands. If he speaks again before I've finished, Merry Men, bung up his mealy mouth!"
"Ay, ay, worthy leader!" shouted the gleeful band.
"Thou hearest, toad of a Squirm? Silence, on thy life! Charge Number Two against thee is that thou didst, of malice aforethought, bring to Foxenby a garbled story about its honoured Captain—to wit, that at ye royal and ancient sign of Ye Anvil Inn, in ye historic and flyblown borough of Moston, he did single out and do grievous bodily harm to a gaping, flabby, half-baked clodhopper who could make no show of resistance.
"Now," continued Robin, getting a fresh breath hurriedly, "think well how thou answerest my questions, as whatever thou lettest slip from thy bloated lips may be used in evidence against thee. Didst thou, or didst thou not, witness the encounter between Forge and the chawbacon?"
"I—I—here, give me my grub and let me go, you fellows!" was the wildly evasive reply.
"Stand ready with the clay, my Merry Men! Answer my question without further ado. Wert thou present at the fight?"
"No; I wasn't."
"Then thy foul slander was the fruit of thy own squirming and villainous imagination?"
"If I wasn't, somebody else was," quavered Peter. "Gimme my prog!"