The Sheriff of
Nottingham called forth all his men likewise, and joined with the
Bishop, for he saw that this was the best chance that had ever befallen
of paying back his score in full to Robin Hood. Will Scarlet and Little
John and Allan a Dale had just missed the King's men to the eastward,
for the very next day after they had passed the line and entered
Sherwood the roads through which they had traveled were blocked, so
that, had they tarried in their journeying, they would surely have
fallen into the Bishop's hands.
But of all this Robin knew not a whit; so he whistled merrily as he
trudged along the road beyond Stanton, with his heart as free from care
as the yolk of an egg is from cobwebs. At last he came to where a
little stream spread across the road in a shallow sheet, tinkling and
sparkling as it fretted over its bed of golden gravel. Here Robin
stopped, being athirst, and, kneeling down, he made a cup of the palms
of his hands, and began to drink. On either side of the road, for a long
distance, stood tangled thickets of bushes and young trees, and it
pleased Robin's heart to hear the little birds singing therein, for it
made him think of Sherwood, and it seemed as though it had been a
lifetime since he had breathed the air of the woodlands.
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