Not long after this, a score or more of the King’s men came clattering up to the door of the inn at Barnet Town.  Here they leaped from their horses and quickly surrounded the place, the leader of the band and four others entering the room where the yeomen had been.  But they found that their birds had flown again, and that the King had been balked a second time.

“Methought that they were naughty fellows,” said the host, when he heard whom the men-at-arms sought.  “But I heard that blue-clad knave say that they would go straight forward to Saint Albans; so, an ye hurry forward, ye may, perchance, catch them on the highroad betwixt here and there.”  For this news the leader of the band thanked mine host right heartily, and, calling his men together, mounted and set forth again, galloping forward to Saint Albans upon a wild goose chase.

After Little John and Will Scarlet and Allan a Dale had left the highway near garnet, they traveled toward the eastward, without stopping, as long as their legs could carry them, until they came to Chelmsford, in Essex.  Thence they turned northward, and came through Cambridge and Lincolnshire, to the good town of Gainsborough.  Then, striking to the westward and the south, they came at last to the northern borders of Sherwood Forest, without in all that time having met so much as a single band of the King’s men.  Eight days they journeyed thus ere they reached the woodlands in safety, but when they got to the greenwood glade, they found that Robin had not yet returned.

For Robin was not as lucky in getting back as his men had been, as you shall presently hear.

After having left the great northern road, he turned his face to the westward, and so came past Aylesbury, to fair Woodstock, in Oxfordshire.  Thence he turned his footsteps northward, traveling for a great distance by way of Warwick Town, till he came to Dudley, in Staffordshire.  Seven days it took him to journey thus far, and then he thought he had gotten far enough to the north, so, turning toward the eastward, shunning the main roads, and choosing byways and grassy lanes, he went, by way of Litchfield and Ashby de la Zouch, toward Sherwood, until he came to a place called Stanton.  And now Robin’s heart began to laugh aloud, for he thought that his danger had gone by, and that his nostrils would soon snuff the spicy air of the woodlands once again.  But there is many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip, and this Robin was to find.  For thus it was: 

When the King’s men found themselves foiled at Saint Albans, and that Robin and his men were not to be found high nor low, they knew not what to do.  Presently another band of horsemen came, and another, until all the moonlit streets were full of armed men.  Betwixt midnight and dawn another band came to the town, and with them came the Bishop of Hereford.  When he heard that Robin Hood had once more slipped out of the trap, he stayed not a minute, but, gathering