"God's my life," said the sheriff, as they rode along,
"I had as lief you would tell me of a service of plate.
I much doubt if this outlawed earl, this forester Robin,
be not the man they call Robin Hood, who has quartered
himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring
to apprehend I have fallen divers times into disasters.
He has gotten together a band of disinherited prodigals,
outlawed debtors, excommunicated heretics, elder sons that
have spent all they had, and younger sons that never had any
thing to spend; and with these he kills the king's deer,
and plunders wealthy travellers of five-sixths of their money;
but if they be abbots or bishops, them he despoils utterly."

The sheriff then proceeded to relate to his companion the adventure
of the abbot of Doubleflask (which some grave historians have
related of the abbot of Saint Mary's, and others of the bishop
of Hereford): how the abbot, returning to his abbey in company
with his high selerer, who carried in his portmanteau the rents
of the abbey-lands, and with a numerous train of attendants,
came upon four seeming peasants, who were roasting the king's
venison by the king's highway: how, in just indignation at
this flagrant infringement of the forest laws, he asked them
what they meant, and they answered that they meant to dine:
how he ordered them to be seized and bound, and led captive
to Nottingham, that they might know wild-flesh to have been destined
by Providence for licensed and privileged appetites, and not for
the base hunger of unqualified knaves: how they prayed for mercy,
and how the abbot swore by Saint Charity that he would show them none:
how one of them thereupon drew a bugle horn from under his
smock-frock and blew three blasts, on which the abbot and his