riar, having stayed long enough to see every thing replaced on a
friendly footing, rose, and moved to take his leave. Matilda told him
he must come again on the morrow, for she had a very long confession
to make to him. This the friar promised to do, and departed with the
knight.

Sir Ralph, on reaching the abbey, drew his followers together, and
led them to Locksley Castle, which he found in the possession of his
lieutenant; whom he again left there with a sufficient force to hold it
in safe keeping in the king's name, and proceeded to London to report
the results of his enterprise.

Now Henry our royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion, and swore
by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated into a saint by
having him knocked on the head), that he would give the castle and lands
of Locksley to the man who should bring in the earl. Hereupon ensued
a process of thought in the mind of the knight. The eyes of the fair
huntress of Arlingford had left a wound in his heart which only she who
gave could heal. He had seen that the baron was no longer very partial
to the outlawed earl, but that he still retained his old affection for
the lands and castle of Locksley. Now the lands and castle were very
fair things in themselves, and would be pretty appurtenances to an
adventurous knight; but they would be doubly valuable as certain
passports to the father's favour, which was one step towards that of the
daughter, or at least towards obtaining possession of her either quietly
or perforce; for the knight was not so nice in his love as to consider
the lady's free grace a sine qua non: and to think of being, by any
means whatever, the lord of Locksley and Arlingford, and the husband
of the bewitching Matilda, was to cut in the shades of futurity a vista
very tempting to a soldier of fortune. He set out in high spirits with
a chosen band of followers, and beat up all the country far and wide
around both the Ouse and the Trent; but fortune did not seem disposed
to second his diligence, for no vestige whatever could he trace of the
earl. His followers, who were only paid with the wages of hope, began to
murmur and fall off; for, as those unenlightened days were ignorant of
the happy invention of paper machinery, by which one promise to pay is
satisfactorily paid with another promise to pay, and that again with
another in infinite series, they would not, as their wiser posterity has
done, take those tenders for true