t for justice to the people; it is the
people's rising that I will head, and not a faction's. Neither White
Rose nor Red shall be on my banner; but our standard shall be the gory
head of the first oppressor we can place upon a pole."

"What is it the people, as you word it, would demand?"

"I scarce know what we demand as yet,--that must depend upon how we
prosper," returned Hilyard, with a bitter laugh; "but the rising will
have some good, if it shows only to you lords and Normans that a Saxon
people does exist, and will turn when the iron heel is upon its neck. We
are taxed, ground, pillaged, plundered,--sheep, maintained to be
sheared for your peace or butchered for your war. And now will we have
a petition and a charter of our own, Lord Montagu. I speak frankly. I
am in thy power; thou canst arrest me, thou canst strike off the head of
this revolt. Thou art the king's friend,--wilt thou do so? No, thou and
thy House have wrongs as well as we, the people. And a part at least of
our demands and our purpose is your own."

"What part, bold man?"

"This: we shall make our first complaint the baneful domination of the
queen's family; and demand the banishment of the Woodvilles, root and
stem."

"Hem!" said Montagu, involuntarily glancing over the archbishop's
letter,--"hem, but without outrage to the king's state and person?"

"Oh, trust me, my lord, the franklin's head contains as much
north-country cunning as the noble's. They who would speed well must
feel their way cautiously."

"Twenty thousand men--impossible! Who art thou, to collect and head
them?"

"Plain Robin of Redesdale."

"Ha!" exclaimed Montagu, "is it indeed as I was taught to suspect?
Art thou that bold, strange, mad fellow, whom, by pike and brand--a
soldier's oath--I, a soldier, have often longed to see. Let me look at
thee. 'Fore Saint George, a tall man, and well knit, with dareiment on
thy brow. Why, there are as many tales of thee in the North as of my
brother the earl. Some say thou art a lord of degree and birth, others
that thou art the robber of Hexham to whom Margaret of Anjou trusted her
own life and her son's."

"Whatever they say of me," returned Robin, "they all agree in
this,--that I am a man of honest word and bold deed; that I can stir
up the hearts of men, as the wind stirreth fire; that I came an
unknown stranger into the parts where I abide; and that no peer in this
roiaulme, save Warwick himself, can do more to raise an