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 army or shake
a throne."

"But by what spell?"

"By men's wrongs, lord," answered Robin, in a deep voice; "and now,
ere this moon wanes, Redesdale is a camp!"

"What the immediate cause of complaint?"