OF THE PLACE OF REFUGE WITHIN THE GREEN

It was toward evening that Beltane awoke, and sitting up, looked about him.  He was in a chamber roughly square, a hollow within the rock part natural and part hewn by hand, a commodious chamber lighted by a jagged hole in the rock above, a fissure all o’er-grown with vines and creeping plants whose luxuriant foliage tempered the sun’s rays to a tender green twilight very grateful and pleasant.

Now pendant from the opening was a ladder of cords, and upon this ladder, just beneath the cleft, Beltane beheld a pair of lusty, well-shaped legs in boots of untanned leather laced up with leathern thongs; as for their owner, he was hidden quite by reason of the leafy screen as he leaned forth of the fissure.  Looking upon these legs, Beltane knew them by their very attitude for the legs of one who watched intently, but while he looked, they stirred, shifted, and growing lax, became the legs of one who lounged; then, slow and lazily, they began to descend lower and lower until the brown, comely face of Giles Brabblecombe o’ the Hills smiled down upon Beltane with a gleam of white teeth.  Cried he: 

“Hail, noble brother, and likewise the good God bless thee!  Hast slept well, it lacketh scarce an hour to sundown, and therefore should’st eat well.  How say ye now to a toothsome haunch o’ cold venison, in faith, cunningly cooked and sufficiently salted and seasoned—­ha?  And mark me! with a mouthful of malmsey, ripely rare?  Oho, rich wine that I filched from a fatuous friar jig-jogging within the green!  Forsooth, tall brother, ’tis a wondrous place, the greenwood, wherein a man shall come by all he doth need—­an he seek far enough!  Thus, an my purse be empty, your beefy burgher shall, by dint of gentle coaxing, haste to fill me it with good, broad pieces.  But, an my emptiness be of the belly, then sweet Saint Giles send me some ambulating abbot or pensive-pacing prior; for your churchmen do ever ride with saddle-bags well lined, as I do know, having been bred a monk, and therefore with a rare lust to creature comforts.”

Now while he spake thus, the archer was busily setting forth the viands upon a rough table that stood hard by, what time Beltane looked about him.

“’Tis a wondrous hiding-place, this, Giles!” quoth he.

“Aye, verily, brother—­a sweet place for hunted men such as we.  Here be caves and caverns enow to hide an army, and rocky passage-ways, narrow and winding i’ the dark, where we four might hold all Black Ivo’s powers at bay from now till Gabriel’s trump—­an we had food enow!”

Quoth Beltane: 

“’Tis a fair thought that, and I’ve heard there be many outlaws in the woods hereabouts?”

“Yea, forsooth.  And each and every a clapper-claw, a rogue in faith.  O very lewd, bloody-minded knaves see ye now, that would have slain me three days agone but for my comrade Walkyn.  Scurvy dogs, fit for the halter they be, in faith!”