gateway in hot pursuit.  One was certainly a guard of some kind, a stout, important-looking fellow, who ran and wheezed as he ran loud enough to be heard at the inn door.  The women standing before the houses, too, presently were after the rest—­all except one old dame, who put her head forth, and peered this way and that with a vindictive anger at having been left all alone.  More yet showed themselves—­children dragging puppies after them, an old man with a large rusty sword, a couple of lads each with a pike—­these appeared, like figures in a pantomime play, whisking into sight from between the houses, and all disappearing again immediately.

And then, all on a sudden, a great clamour of voices began, all shouting together, as if some quarry had been sighted:  it grew louder, sharp cries of command rang above the roar.  Then there burst out of the side, where all had gone in, a ball of children, which exploded into fragments and faced about, still with a couple of puppies that barked shrilly; and then, walking very fast and upright, came Mr. Robin Audrey, white-faced and stern, straight up to where the lad waited with the horses.

Robin jerked his head.

“Quick!” he said.  “We must be off, or we shall be here all night.”  He gathered up his reins for mounting.

“What is it, sir?” asked the other, unable to be silent.

“They have caught some fellows,” he said.

“And the inn-account, sir?”

Robin pulled out a couple of coins from his pouch.

“Put that on the table within,” he said.  “We can wait no longer.  Give me your reins!”

His manner was so dreadful that the young man dared ask no more.  He ran in, laid the coins down (they were more than double what could have been asked for their entertainment), came out again, and mounted his own horse that his friend held.  As they rode down the street, he could not refrain from looking back, as a great roar of voices broke out again; but he could see no more than a crowd of men, with the pitchforks moving like spears on the outskirt, as if they guarded prisoners within, come out between the houses and turn up towards the inn they themselves had just left.

* * * * *

As they came clear of the village and out again upon the open road, Robin turned to him, and his face was still pale and stern.

“Mr. Arnold,” he said, “those were the last of my friends that I told you of.  Now they have them all, and there is no longer any hope.  They found them behind the haystacks next to the garden where we dined.  They must have been there all night.”

CHAPTER III

I

It was in the evening of the fourth day after their start that, riding up alongside of the Blythe, they struck out to the northwest, away from the trees, and saw the woods of Chartley not half a mile away.  Robin sighed with relief, though, as a fact, his adventure was scarcely more than begun, since he had yet to learn how he could get speech with the Queen; but, at least, he was within sight of her, and of his own country as well.  Far away, eastwards, beyond the hills, not twenty miles off, lay Derby.