iar's arm.

"How now, recreant friar," said Marian; "what have you to say why you
should not suffer instant execution, being detected in open rebellion
against your liege lord? Therefore kneel down, traitor, and submit your
neck to the sword of the offended law."

"Benefit of clergy," said the friar: "I plead my clergy. And is it you
indeed, ye scapegraces? Ye are well disguised: I knew ye not, by my
flask. Robin, jolly Robin, he buys a jest dearly that pays for it with
a bloody coxcomb. But here is balm for all bruises, outward and inward.
(The friar produced a flask of canary.) Wash thy wound twice and thy
throat thrice with this solar concoction, and thou shalt marvel where
was thy hurt. But what moved ye to this frolic? Knew ye not that ye
could not appear in a mask more fashioned to move my bile than in that
of these gilders and lackerers of the smooth surface of worthlessness,
that bring the gold of true valour into disrepute, by stamping the baser
metal with the fairer im-pression? I marvelled to find any such given
to fighting (for they have an old instinct of self-preservation): but
I rejoiced thereat, that I might discuss to them poetical justice:
and therefore have I cracked thy sconce: for which, let this be thy
medicine."

"But wherefore," said Marian, "do we find you here, when we left you
joint lord warden of Sherwood?"

"I do but retire to my devotions," replied the friar. "This is my
hermitage, in which I first took refuge when I escaped from my beloved
brethren of Rubygill; and to which I still retreat at times from the
vanities of the world, which else might cling to me too closely, since
I have been promoted to be peer-spiritual of your forest-court. For,
indeed, I do find in myself certain indications and admonitions that my
day has past its noon; and none more cogent than this: that daily of
bad wine I grow more intolerant, and of good wine have a keener and
more fastidious relish. There is no surer symptom of receding years. The
ferryman is my faithful varlet. I send him on some pious errand, that I
may meditate in ghostly privacy, when my presence in the forest can best
be spared: and when can it be better spared than now, seeing that
the neighbourhood of Prince John, and his incessant perquisitions for
Marian, have made the forest too hot to hold more of us than are
needful to keep up a quorum, and preserve unbroken the continuity of
our forest-dominion? For, in truth, without your greenwood