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5. revenge !”
- ROBIN HOOD'S BAY,
‘perved you as I served those whose carcases
you will have seen. Seek not for your
women, for I hold them in safe keeping,
together with two of your pack, whose lives
Ihave a brief use for. Read and take
werning, for there is yet rope for your own
hanging.
“REGINALD BRASFER.” ~
Thero was a snarl of rage from the
band as the last word was read, though
Robin Hood betrayed no sign, but simply
dropped the parchment into the glowing
ruins, where it flared and shrivelled to a
cinder.
“May that be tho fate of this Norman
murderer, for by the Heaven above and
the souls of the dead, I swear to havo
~ He raised his sword-hilt to his lips and
kissed it, and every man lifted his weapon
to the starry sky and joined their vow
with his.
Then Robin Hood turned, and with a
last sweeping glance at tho desolation
around him, as if noting each horror so
that his purpose might be the more com-
plete, swung up onthe cliff-path, followed
y his silent mon.
Onward they strode towards the north.
The fresh sea breeze fanned their burn-
ing temples, but there were fires of hate
burning within which blood alone could
cool.
Mile after milo ‘passed in silence, and
then they paused at the cliff-edge and
gazed across a moonlit strip of sea at a
frowning battlemented pile, from which
a single light shone out like an open,
7 watchful eye,
a
It was the castlo of Brasfer,
Robin Hood sank down upon a boulder
and gazed at that ycllow spark liko one
in a trance.
And his comrades crouched down
behind, and, liko true soldiers, drowned
for a brief while tho momory of their
terrible homecoming in sleep. .
Morning broke, and found Robin
Hood still seated there, and the great
dark rings which encircled his flashing
eyes told through what a terriblo vigi
his soul had passed.
Friar Tuck was first afoot, and sought
to rouse his chief with words of haope,
but all that Robin would utter was the
word:
“ Revengo !”
But tho instinct of the soldier told
him that he and his men must not bo dis-
: 13
covered yet in the proximity of the casilo,
and so the command was given to “Rouse
out!” and the band fell back silontly into
the shadow of the woods,
Here sentries were posted, and tho
foresters fell to on a scant breakfast of
sea-fowl and dried fish, a supply of which
they had brought with them.
Then a council of war was hold.
Even with the addition of such fishor-
men of that coast who might be induced
to aid them, Robin Hood could not now
rely on moro than forty men to back him,
and the idea of such a small forco at-
tempting to take Brasfer’s towerin
castle, with its sheer drop of a hundred
and eighty feet from its battlements to
the sea below, seomed preposterous,
But Robin Hood’s presence alono was
worth a hundred men, whilo his right
arm, steeled as it was with vengeance,
was strong enough for ten.
“ Know you aught of this castle, friend
Wat?” asked Robin, after they had re-
viowed their possible strength. “ Me-
thinks it is like to prove a hard nut to
crack, for it is strongly built and shrewdly
placed, and short of siego I scarcely: yet
know how to come at it. Yot, by tho
rood! I will assuredly burst its gates,
even if I wait twenty years to do it.”
“I know this of it, that itis plaguey
strong,” Wat replied, gloomily. “Many
ears ago, when I was but a slip of a lad,
have been there with my father to take
the old baron’s toll of fish to tho kitchens,
and I remember remarking upon tho
strange thickness of the walls for a —
castle already defended. on three sides
by the sea, .
‘A cleft in the rock fifteon feet wide
and a hundred deep maybo, bounds it on
the land side, and here is the drawbridge
and the gate. Though it is an easy leap
for a man to clear the chasm, there is not
enough footing for a goat on the other
side, and above towers a wall of thirty
feet at least.” :
“Humph! The task docs not seem to
promise well, unless we content ourselves
to starve thom out,” Little John broke
in.
“And that will be at Doomsday, me-
thinks, so long as thero are tish in tho
sea and they havo a lino to catch them,”
said the friar. “Though, by St. Tun:
stan, I would sooner bo here than thera,
to be condemned to liva on fish’ and sult
wator until Doomsday,”