rades, would have cut his way to the king."

"Ay, ay, true; we saved his highness, and ought to have been
knighted,--but there's no gratitude nowadays!"

"And who was this doughty warrior?" asked one of the bystanders, who
secretly favoured the rebellion.

"Why, it was said that he was Robin of Redesdale,--he who fought my Lord
Montagu off York."

"Our Robin!" exclaimed several voices. "Ay, he was ever a brave
fellow--poor Robin!"

"'Your Robin,' and 'poor Robin,' varlets!" cried the principal trooper.
"Have a care! What do ye mean by your Robin?"

"Marry, sir soldier," quoth a butcher, scratching his head, and in a
humble voice, "craving your pardon and the king's, this Master Robin
sojourned a short time in this hamlet, and was a kind neighbour, and
mighty glib of the tongue. Don't ye mind, neighbours," he added rapidly,
eager to change the conversation, "how he made us leave off when we were
just about burning Adam Warner, the old nigromancer, in his den yonder?
Who else could have done that? But an' we had known Robin had been
a rebel to sweet King Edward, we'd have roasted him along with the
wizard!"

One of the timbrel-girls, the leader of the choir, her arm round a
soldier's neck, looked up at the last speech, and her eye followed the
gesture of the butcher, as he pointed through the open lattice to the
sombre, ruinous abode of Adam Warner.

"Was that the house ye would have burned?" she asked abruptly.

"Yes; but Robin told us the king would hang those who took on them the
king's blessed privilege of burning nigromancers; and, sure enough,
old Adam Warner was advanced to be wizard-in-chief to the king's own
highness a week or two afterwards."

The friar had made a slight movement at the name of Warner; he now
pushed his stool nearer to the principal group, and drew his hood
completely over his countenance.

"Yea!" exclaimed the mechanic, whose son had been the innocent cause of
the memorable siege to poor Adam's dilapidated fortress, related in the
first book of this narrative"--yea; and what did he when there? Did he
not devise a horrible engine for the destruction of the poor,--an engine
that was to do all the work in England by the devil's help?--so that if
a gentleman wanted a coat of mail, or a cloth tunic; if his dame needed
a Norwich worsted; if a yeoman lacked a plough or a wagon, or his good
wife a pot or a kettle; they were to go, not to the armourer, and the
draper, and the tailor, and t