“How’s that?” said a brisk young fellow, dressed in a green cassock embroidered with gold, and having at his heels a stout lad bearing a harp upon his back, which betrayed his vocation. The Minstrel seemed of no vulgar rank; for, besides the splendour of his gaily braidered doublet, he wore around his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp. On his right arm was a silver plate, which, instead of bearing, as usual, the cognizance or badge of the baron to whose family he belonged, had barely the word Sherwood engraved upon it.—“How mean you by that?” said the gay Minstrel, mingling in the conversation of the peasants; “I came to seek one subject for my rhyme, and, by’r Lady, I were glad to find two.”
“It is well avouched,” said the elder peasant, “that after Athelstane of Coningsburgh had been dead four weeks—”
“That is impossible,” said the Minstrel; “I saw him in life at the Passage of Arms at Ashby-de-la-Zouche .”
“Dead, however, he was, or else translated,” said the younger peasant; “for I heard the Monks of Saint Edmund’s singing the death’s hymn for him; and, moreover, there was a rich death-meal and dole at the Castle of Coningsburgh, as right was; and thither had I gone, but for Mabel Parkins, who—”
“Ay, dead was Athelstane,” said the old man, shaking his head, “and the more pity it was, for the old Saxon blood—”
“But, your story, my masters—your story,” said the Minstrel, somewhat impatiently.
“Ay, ay—construe us the story,” said a burly Friar, who stood beside them, leaning on a pole that exhibited an appearance between a pilgrim’s staff and a quarterstaff, and probably acted as either when occasion served—“Your story,” said the stalwart churchman; “burn not daylight about it—we have short time to spare.”