-a chip of the old block, Mawd. A wild
girl, and a wild friar, and three or four foresters, wild lads all, to
keep a bridge against a tame knight, and a tame sheriff, and fifty tame
varlets; by this light, the like was never heard! But do you know, Mawd,
you must not go about so any more, sweet Mawd: you must stay at home,
you must ensconce; for there is your tame sheriff on the one hand, that
will take you perforce; and there is your wild forester on the other
hand, that will take you without any force at all, Mawd: your wild
forester, Robin, cousin Robin, Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, that beats
and binds bishops, spreads nets for archbishops, and hunts a fat abbot
as if he were a buck: excellent game, no doubt, but you must hunt no
more in such company. I see it now: truly I might have guessed before
that the bold outlaw Robin, the most courteous Robin, the new thief of
Sherwood Forest, was your lover, the earl that has been: I might have
guessed it before, and what led you so much to the woods; but you hunt
no more in such company. No more May games and Gamwell feasts. My lands
and castle would be the forfeit of a few more such pranks; and I think
they are as well in my hands as the king's, quite as well."

"You know, father," said Matilda, "the condition of keeping me at home:
I get out if I can, and not on parole."

"Ay! ay!" said the baron, "if you can; very true: watch and ward, Mawd,
watch and ward is my word: if you can, is yours. The mark is set, and so
start fair."

The baron would have gone on in this way for an hour; but the friar made
his appearance with a long oak staff in his hand, singing,--

Drink and sing, and eat and laugh,
And so go forth to battle:
For the top of a skull and the end of a staff
Do make a ghostly rattle.

"Ho! ho! friar!" said the baron--"singing friar, laughing friar,
roaring friar, fighting friar, hacking friar, thwacking friar; cracking,
cracking, cracking friar; joke-cracking, bottle-cracking, skull-cracking
friar!"

"And ho! ho!" said the friar,--"bold baron, old baron, sturdy baron,
wordy baron, long baron, strong baron, mighty baron, flighty baron,
mazed baron, crazed baron, hacked baron, thwacked baron; cracked,
cracked, cracked baron; bone-cracked, sconce-cracked, brain-cracked
baron!"

"What do you mean," said the baron, "bully friar, by calling me hacked
and thwacked?"

"Were you not in the wars?" said the friar, "where he who escapes
untracked