her point with the baron of ranging at liberty
whithersoever she would, under her positive promise to return home; she
was a sort of prisoner on parole: she had obtained this indulgence by
means of an obsolete habit of always telling the truth and keeping her
word, which our enlightened age has discarded with other barbarisms,
but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her,
that he could not help considering her word a better security than locks
and bars.

The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of the new
outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had taken all possible precautions to
keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that they might cause
the interruption of her greenwood liberty; and it was only during her
absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler, being thrown off his guard by
liquor, forgot her injunctions, and regaled the baron with a long story
of the right merry adventure of Robin Hood and the abbot of Doubleflask.

The baron was one morning, as usual, cutting his way valorously through
a rampart of cold provision, when his ears were suddenly assailed by a
tremendous alarum, and sallying forth, and looking from his castle wall,
he perceived a large party of armed men on the other side of the
moat, who were calling on the warder in the king's name to lower the
drawbridge and raise the portcullis, which had both been secured by
Matilda's order. The baron walked along the battlement till he came
opposite to these unexpected visitors, who, as soon as they saw him,
called out, "Lower the drawbridge, in the king's name."

"For what, in the devil's name?" said the baron.

"The sheriff of Nottingham," said one, "lies in bed grievously bruised,
and many of his men are wounded, and several of them slain; and Sir
Ralph Montfaucon, knight, is sore wounded in the arm; and we are charged
to apprehend William Gamwell the younger, of Gamwell Hall, and father
Michael of Rubygill Abbey, and Matilda Fitzwater of Arlingford Castle,
as agents and accomplices in the said breach of the king's peace."

"Breach of the king's fiddlestick!" answered the baron. "What do you
mean by coming here with your cock and bull, stories of my daughter
grievously bruising the sheriff of Nottingham? You are a set of vagabond
rascals in disguise; and I hear, by the bye, there is a gang of thieves
that has just set up business in Sherwood Forest: a pretty presence,
indeed, to get into my castle with force