"Still less," said the friar, hurrying out of the cell.
Robin and Marian followed: but the friar outstepped them, and pushed off his boat.
A white figure was visible under the shade of the opposite trees.
The boat approached the shore, and the figure glided away.
The friar returned.
They re-entered the cottage, and sat some time conversing on the phenomenon they had seen. The friar sipped his wine, and after a time, said:
"There is a tradition of a damsel who was drowned here some years ago.
The tradition is----"
But the friar could not narrate a plain tale: he therefore cleared his throat, and sang with due solemnity, in a ghostly voice:
A damsel came in midnight rain, And called across the ferry:
The weary wight she called in vain, Whose senses sleep did bury.
At evening, from her father's door She turned to meet her lover:
At midnight, on the lonely shore, She shouted "Over, over!"
She had not met him by the tree Of their accustomed meeting, And sad and sick at heart was she, Her heart all wildly beating.
In chill suspense the hours went by, The wild storm burst above her:
She turned her to the river nigh, And shouted, "Over, over!"
A dim, discoloured, doubtful light The moon's dark veil permitted, And thick before her troubled sight Fantastic shadows flitted.
Her lover's form appeared to glide, And beckon o'er the water:
Alas! his blood that morn had dyed Her brother's sword with slaughter.
Upon a little rock she stood, To make her invocation:
She marked not that the rain-swoll'n flood Was islanding her station.
The tempest mocked her feeble cry:
No saint his aid would give her:
The flood swelled high and yet more high, And swept her down the river.
Yet oft beneath the pale moonlight, When hollow winds are blowing, The shadow of that maiden bright Glides by the dark stream's flowing.
And when the storms of midnight rave, While clouds the broad moon cover, The wild gusts waft across the wave The cry of, "Over, over!"
While the friar was singing, Marian was meditating: and when he had ended she said, "Honest friar, you have misplaced your tradition, which belongs to the aestuary of a nobler river, where the damsel was swept away by the rising of the tide, for which your land-flood is an indifferent substitute.
But the true tradition of this stream I think I myself possess, and I will narrate it in your own way:
It was a friar of orders free, A friar of Rubygill:
At the greenwood-tree a vow made he, But he kept it very ill:
A vow made he of chastity, But he kept it very ill.
He kept it, perchance, in the conscious shade Of the bounds of the forest wherein it was made:
But he roamed where he listed, as free as the wind, And he left his good vow in the forest behind:
For its woods out of sight were his vow out of mind, With the friar of Rubygill.
In lonely hut himself he shut, The friar of Rubygill;
Where the ghostly elf absolved himself, To follow his own good will:
And he had no lack of canary sack, To keep his conscience still.
And a damsel well knew, when at lonely midnight It gleamed on the waters, his signal-lamp-light:
"Over! over!" she warbled with nightingale throat, And the friar sprung forth at the magical note, And she crossed the dark stream in his trim ferryboat, With the friar of Rubygill.
"Look you now," said Robin, "if the friar does not blush.
Many strange sights have I seen in my day, but never till this moment did I see a blushing friar."
"I think," said the friar, "you never saw one that blushed not, or you saw good canary thrown away. But you are welcome to laugh if it so please you. None shall laugh in my company, though it be at my expense, but I will have my share of the merriment.
The world is a stage, and life is a farce, and he that laughs most has most profit of the performance. The worst thing is good enough to be laughed at, though it be good for nothing else; and the best thing, though it be good for something else, is good for nothing better."
And he struck up a song in praise of laughing and quaffing, without further adverting to Marian's insinuated accusation; being, perhaps, of opinion, that it was a subject on which the least said would be the soonest mended.
So passed the night. In the morning a forester came to the friar, with intelligence that Prince John had been compelled, by the urgency of his affairs in other quarters, to disembarrass Nottingham Castle of his royal presence. Our wanderers returned joyfully to their forest-dominion, being thus relieved from the vicinity of any more formidable belligerent than their old bruised and beaten enemy the sheriff of Nottingham.
