And then the thought of what this ruffian had proposed to me came over me in all its horror—that he and I should prowl over the field of battle when night fell, and seek for riches among the quiet slain—and I shrank from him. Whereat he grinned evilly, and that turned my contempt to wrath, so that my hand went to the hilt of the broad forester's hanger that I wore.
"Away with you," I said, "I will have no more of you."
"Well, well; be not so hasty, I pray you. I did but jest," he stammered, giving back a pace or two.
But I knew better. No true man jests with such things, and I told him so, once more bidding him begone.
"Well, I will go," he growled; "but, mind you, there is a reward for him who brings a deer-slayer to justice."
"You can do as you like about earning that," I answered. "It seems all one to you how you get wealth, so that it comes easily."
So he went, looking back now and then to see, I suppose, if I was in earnest. I took my bow from the tree where I had set it, and plucked the arrow from the slain deer at my feet, at which he hastened to put as many tree trunks between me and himself as possible, and I lost sight of him.
I fell to brittling the deer quickly when he was gone, for I was by no means so sure that he would not set the sheriff on me, as he had hinted. I did not think it likely that that quiet old worthy would trouble himself about me, with a battle raging at his very doors, as one might say; but so far he had heard nothing of me, and I could come and go into the town pretty freely when I would, though the chance of some Yorkist from my own country seeing me was an ever-present danger that kept me out of sight as much as possible if I did go. Still there were things that I needed that must be bought there now and then, and it would be hard to have the place closed to me. Now, I thought it just as well to get the deer I had killed to my cave, in case I had to go into hiding; and I was glad that some old distrust of this man Cork had kept me from telling him of it when I first knew him.
That was about two years ago, when I had to fly from Yorkshire with a price on my head as a Lancastrian, while those who had come to take me lighted my way north across the moors by burning my own stronghold, the little Peel tower of which I had been as proud as of the old name of Barvill that I dared own no longer, behind me.
I had taken no part in the strife of the Roses, having enough fighting from time to time with the Scots raiders who had slain my father six years ago. But I had always been brought up to reverence King Henry, and made no secret thereof, which was quite enough to ruin me in the days when York first had the upper hand and meant to keep it.