We laid our burden on the leaves. The poor youth’s face was so white and still and his hands so cold that truly I thought we were too late and that his spirit had fled. But Cedric stripped away the garments from the lad’s breast and laid his ear against it. Then he rose and nodded brightly.
“He lives. We yet will save him. First let us make ready a bandage, then pluck this shaft away and bind the wound.”
I quickly stripped me of a linen garment of which Cedric did make a soft dressing and shield for the hurt. Then I held the quivering side while Cedric firmly drew away the arrow. As it came forth the boy gave a piteous groan and his eyes flickered open, but quickly closed again. The bleeding started afresh, but the forester, with a wondrous deftness, applied the bandage and closely fastened it with strips that went about the body and over the shoulders of the lad. Then we brought water in an iron cup which Cedric carried at his girdle, and bathed the boy’s white face. Soon his eyes opened once more, and he asked for drink.
When the lad’s thirst was sated and he knew us again, Cedric stole out with cross-bow drawn to make his way a little down the glen and see if any of the robber band had trailed us. Seeing naught of them, he quickly returned and took our good steed and, first giving him to drink at the stream, tethered him in a close thicket half a furlong off where he might browse in quiet and mayhap escape the notice of our enemies.
An hour later we re-dressed our companion’s hurt, using a poultice of healing leaves which Cedric had found by the brookside and crushed between stones. Soon the lad fell asleep, and though sometimes beset with grievous pains and babbling dreams, did rest not ill for one who had been so near to death.
Cedric and I watched the night out, sitting with drawn bows at the cave mouth. The stars were bright, but there was no moon and little wind; and our talk was low lest after all some of the outlaws might be near. Half in whispers he told me the story of the glen and its name. It seems that an honest yeoman, John o’ the Windle, who had been his father’s friend in his youth, had had the mischance to quarrel with a sheriff’s man, and, to save his own life, had pierced him with a cloth-yard shaft. Then John Windle had fled to the forest and become a wolf’s head, which is the name the commonalty have for outlaws, since the killing of either wolves or outlaws may bring a bounty from the Crown. For years he had lived in this very glen, with his hiding place in the cave known to but a few faithful friends. Often he was pursued to the little valley, but among its woods and streams always shook off the sheriff’s trailers and made good his ‘scape. Finally the legend grew that he was befriended by unseen powers and changed himself to a wolf whenever he crossed the little stream at the place where so many times his trail had been lost. Cedric’s father, Elbert of Pelham Wood, had once brought him to this spot to visit the outlaw after he had become old and was far gone in his last sickness; and a few days later the two foresters had buried the wolf’s head near the cave where he had lived.