wisted trunk of the great tree.

All the way to the 'Three Jolly Anglers' and during the rest of the
evening the thought of the little desolate figure haunted me, so much
so that, having sent away my dinner untasted, I took pen and ink and
wrote him a letter, enclosing with it my penknife, which I had often
seen him regard with "the eye of desire," despite the blade he had
broken upon a certain memorable occasion. This done, I became
possessed of a determination to send some message to Lisbeth also--just
a few brief words which should yet reveal to her something of the
thoughts I bore her ere I passed ut of her life forever.

For over an hour I sat there, chewing the stem of my useless pipe and
racking my bran, but the "few brief words" obstinately refused to come.
Nine o'clock chimed mournfully from the Norman tower of the church hard
by, yet still my pen was idle and the paper before me blank; also I
became conscious of a tapping somewhere close at hand, now stopping,
now beginning again, whose wearisome iteration so irritated my
fractious nerves that I flung down my pen and rose.

The noise seemed to come from the vicinity of the window. Crossing to
it, therefore, I flung the casement suddenly open, and found myself
staring into a round face, in which were set two very round eyes and a
button of a nose, the whole surmounted by a shock of red hair.

"'Allo, Mr. Uncle Dick!"

It needed but this and a second glance at the round face to assure me
that it pertained to Ben, the gardener's boy.

"What, my noble Benjamin?" I exclaimed.

"No, it's me!" answered the redoubtable Ben. "'E said I was to give
you this an' tell you, 'Life an' death!'" As he spoke he held out a
roll of paper tied about the middle with a boot lace; which done, the
round head grinned, nodded, and disappeared from my ken. Unwinding the
boot lace, I spread out the paper and read the following words,
scrawled in pencil:

Hi the to the Blasted Oke and all will be forgiven. Come back to your
luving frends and bigones shall be bigones. Look to the hole in the
trunk there of.

Sined,
ROBIN, Outlaw and Knight.

P.S. I mean where i hid her stockings--you no.

I stood for some time with this truly mysterious document in my hand,
in two minds what to do about it; if I went, the chances were that I
should run against the Imp, and there would be a second leave-taking,
which in my present mood I had small taste for. On the other hand,
ther