I swear by this,
This holy cross, my mother's dying gift!

FITZWALTER

It's very sure he'd burn the castle down.

[_Exeunt._]

SHADOW-OF-A-LEAF

[_Coming out into the moonlight and staring up after them._]

The nun! The nun! They'll whip me if I speak,
For I am only Shadow-of-a-Leaf, the Fool.

[_Curtain._]

ACT II

_SCENE I. Sherwood Forest: An open glade, showing on the right the mouth
of the outlaw's cave. It is about sunset. The giant figure of LITTLE
JOHN comes out of the cave, singing._

LITTLE JOHN

[_Sings._]

When Spring comes back to England
And crowns her brows with may,
Round the merry moonlit world
She goes the greenwood way.

[_He stops and calls in stentorian tones._]

Much! Much! Much! Where has he vanished now,
Where has that monstrous giant the miller's son
Hidden himself?

[_Enter MUCH, a dwarf-like figure, carrying a large bundle of ferns._]

MUCH

Hush, hush, child, here I am!
And here's our fairy feather-beds, ha! ha!
Come, praise me, praise me, for a thoughtful parent.
There's nothing makes a better bed than ferns
Either for sleeping sound or rosy dreams.

LITTLE JOHN

Take care the fern-seed that the fairies use
Get not among thy yellow locks, my Titan,
Or thou'lt wake up invisible. There's none
Too much of Much already.

MUCH

[_Looking up at him impudently._]

It would take
Our big barn full of fern-seed, I misdoubt,
To make thee walk invisible, Little John,
My sweet Tom Thumb! And, in this troublous age
Of forest-laws, if we night-walking minions,
We gentlemen of the moon, could only hunt
Invisible, there's many and many of us
With thumbs lopped off, eyes gutted and legs pruned,
Slick, like poor pollarded pear-trees, would be lying
Happy and whole this day beneath the boughs.

LITTLE JOHN

Invisible? Ay, but what would Jenny say
To such a ghostly midge as thou would'st be
Sipping invisibly at her cherry lips.

MUCH

Why, there now, that's a teaser. E'en as it is
(Don't joke about it) my poor Jenny takes
The smallness of her Much sorely to heart!
And though I often tell her half a loaf
(Ground in our mill) is better than