“Fear not, Rosalind,” he cried, drawing his dagger. “If it be a devil, I defy it in God’s name; and if it be a man why I will try what this good steel can do.”
“Tut, tut,” exclaimed Robin, “put up your cheese-knife boy. Come hither. Know you me not?”
“Mayhap then, fair Sir, you have heard of a _certain youth_, who on the night before he departed from the castle--the castle where his infancy had been passed--to be a page at court, took occasion to pour a sleeping potion into the wine of a _certain yeoman_; and then shaving one side of the yeoman’s face; concluded by tying a dead cat around his neck, thus making an honest soldier a mock of laughter for all the castle. Did’st ever hear of such a page? Eh? Guiseppo?”
“Why the Virgin bless me,” exclaimed Rosalind, “It’s Rough Robin!”
“Eh?” cried the page with a stare of astonishment.
“If you value your life, Guiseppo,” continued the yeoman; “Hie away, and bring me a dozen flasks of wine or so, and a round of beef. Speak not a word, but haste away. I am nigh starved to death, and the devil may tempt me to cut a slice from the trim figure of a certain page; away!”
As Guiseppo left the apartment, Rosalind asked the bold yeoman where he had been for the last three days, and wherefore he looked so much like a ghost risen from the dead merely for its own amusement.
“_My lord the Count Aldarin_,” replied Robin with a grim smile, “_despatched me--upon a long journey, to arrange matters of business entirely relating to himself._”
Having thus spoken, he again entered the bower of the Ladye Annabel, and laying hold of the senseless body of Aldarin, he dragged him into the ante-chamber, and then returned to assist the damsel Rosalind in the recovery of her mistress.
When the Ladye Annabel opened her fair blue eyes, she gazed hurriedly around the apartment until her glance was met by that of the bold yeoman. She gave a faint scream, and her form trembled with affright.
“St. Withold!” exclaimed the yeoman--“but I do seem to frighten every one that looks at me, into fits. Fear me not, Ladye Annabel--’Tis I--Rough Robin--I would speak a few words to thee. The import of what I have to say is of a fearful nature.”
“Ah!” said Annabel, “of what would you speak?”