ou make a virtue of necessity, or will you give laws to the
flowing tide? Will you give her, or shall Robin take her? Will you be
her true natural father, or shall I commute paternity? Stand forth,
Scarlet."

"Stand back, sirrah Scarlet," said the baron. "My daughter shall have no
father but me. Needs must when the devil drives."

"No matter who drives," said the friar, "so that, like a well-disposed
subject, you yield cheerful obedience to those who can enforce it."

"Mawd, sweet Mawd," said the baron, "will you then forsake your poor
old father in his distress, with his castle in ashes, and his enemy in
power?"

"Not so, father," said Marian; "I will always be your true daughter: I
will always love, and serve, and watch, and defend you: but neither will
I forsake my plighted love, and my own liege lord, who was your choice
before he was mine, for you made him my associate in infancy; and that
he continued to be mine when he ceased to be yours, does not in any way
show remissness in my duties or falling off in my affections. And though
I here plight my troth at the altar to Robin, in the presence of this
holy priest and pious clerk, yet.... Father, when Richard returns from
Palestine, he will restore you to your barony, and perhaps, for your
sake, your daughter's husband to the earldom of Huntingdon: should that
never be, should it be the will of fate that we must live and die in the
greenwood, I will live and die MAID MARIAN." [4]

"A pretty resolution," said the baron, "if Robin will let you keep it."

"I have sworn it," said Robin. "Should I expose her tenderness to the
perils of maternity, when life and death may hang on shifting at a
moment's notice from Sherwood to Barnsdale, and from Barnsdale to the
sea-shore? And why should I banquet when my merry men starve? Chastity
is our forest law, and even the friar has kept it since he has been
here."

"Truly so," said the friar: "for temptation dwells with ease and luxury:
but the hunter is Hippolytus, and the huntress is Dian. And now, dearly
beloved----"

The friar went through the ceremony with great unction, and Little John
was most clerical in the intonation of his responses. After which, the
friar sang, and Little John fiddled, and the foresters danced, Robin
with Marian, and Scarlet with the baron; and the venison smoked, and
the ale frothed, and the wine sparkled, and the sun went down on their
unwearied festivity: which they wound up with the followin