`but I can
find no floor.' He laughed a rough laugh, and saith `You can find as
much as there is. There is _little ease_ yonder.' And he shut to the
door and left me. All at once it flashed on me where I was: and so
terrible was the knowledge, that a cold sweat brake forth all over me.
I had heard of the horrible prison in the Bishop of Lincoln's Palace of
Woburn, called Little Ease [Note 1], which tapered down to a point,
wherein a man might neither stand, nor sit, nor lie. Somewhat like
despair came over me. Were they about to leave me to lie here and die
of hunger? I shouted, and my voice came back to me with a mocking echo.
I held my breath to listen, and I heard no sound. I was an outcast, a
dead man out of mind; `the earth with her bars was about me for ever.'
I had borne all easily (so to speak) save this. But now I covered my
face with mine hands, and wept like a child."

"My poor Robin!" said Isoult. "Tell me when this was."

"It was at the beginning of the hot weather," he answered. "I fancy it
might be about June. I thanked God heartily that it was not winter."

"Ay," said she, "thou wouldst have more light."

"Light!" he said, and smiled. "No light ever came into Little Ease. I
never knew day from night all the while I was there. Once in three days
my gaoler unlocked the door, and let down to me a rope, at the end
whereof was a loaf of bread, and after a tin pitcher of water; and I had
to fasten thereto the empty pitcher. Such thirst was on me that I
commonly drank the water off, first thing."

"But how didst thou go to bed?" asked Walter.

Robin smiled, and told the child there was no bed to go to.

"And did the gaoler never forget thee?" Kate wished to know.

"Twice he did," answered Robin, "for a day. But that would not kill me,
thou wist. I became very weak ere I came forth. But to continue:--I
wept long and bitterly, but it gave me no comfort. I felt as if nothing
ever would give me comfort again. The Devil was very near me. It was
all folly, he whispered. I had hoped a vision, and had believed a lie.
God was dead, if there ever were any God; He never came into Little
Ease. None would ever know where and what I was become. I should die
here, and if fifty years hence my whitened bones were found, none would
know whose they had been. Your dear faces rose around me, and I could
have wept again, to think I should never see you any more. But the
fountain of my tears was dr