ve boughs; and in the
fork, like a mast-headed seaman, there stood a man in a green tabard,
spying far and wide. The sun glistened upon his hair; with one hand he
shaded his eyes to look abroad, and he kept slowly rolling his head from
side to side, with the regularity of a machine.

The lads exchanged glances.

"Let us try to the left," said Dick. "We had near fallen foully, Jack."

Ten minutes afterwards they struck into a beaten path.

"Here is a piece of forest that I know not," Dick remarked. "Where goeth
me this track?"

"Let us even try," said Matcham.

A few yards further, the path came to the top of a ridge and began to go
down abruptly into a cup-shaped hollow. At the foot, out of a thick wood
of flowering hawthorn, two or three roofless gables, blackened as if by
fire, and a single tall chimney marked the ruins of a house.

"What may this be?" whispered Matcham.

"Nay, by the mass, I know not," answered Dick. "I am all at sea. Let us
go warily."

With beating hearts, they descended through the hawthorns. Here and
there, they passed signs of recent cultivation; fruit trees and pot herbs
ran wild among the thicket; a sun-dial had fallen in the grass; it seemed
they were treading what once had been a garden. Yet a little farther and
they came forth before the ruins of the house.

It had been a pleasant mansion and a strong. A dry ditch was dug deep
about it; but it was now choked with masonry, and bridged by a fallen
rafter. The two farther walls still stood, the sun shining through their
empty windows; but the remainder of the building had collapsed, and now
lay in a great cairn of ruin, grimed with fire. Already in the interior
a few plants were springing green among the chinks.

"Now I bethink me," whispered Dick, "this must be Grimstone. It was a
hold of one Simon Malmesbury; Sir Daniel was his bane! 'Twas Bennet
Hatch that burned it, now five years agone. In sooth, 'twas pity, for it
was a fair house."

Down in the hollow, where no wind blew, it was both warm and still; and
Matcham, laying one hand upon Dick's arm, held up a warning finger.

"Hist!" he said.

Then came a strange sound, breaking on the quiet. It was twice repeated
ere they recognised its nature. It was the sound of a big man clearing
his throat; and just then a hoarse, untuneful voice broke into singing.

"Then up and spake the master, the king of the outlaws:
'What make ye here, my merry men, among