So sweet and tragic, her heart near stopped from its sorrow as she read it. She knew at once what it was--a mortal Arab poison, given long years ago to her woodland lover by a follower of the Lion King. It might serve him in a sore need, had been the words accompanying the gift--to taste it was death. And once Robin had shown it to her, proposing, half playfully, that they should pledge one another in its Lethe were Fate ever to dispart them. And so she knew that her last hope was dead before her. Robin could not come. He was hurt; he was ill; the guards were too many for them, the Fates too strong, and their only refuge at last was in death. He had sent some one of his cunning archers, Will Scarlet belike, to take advantage of this merrymaking to speed the message, and, when she had realised all that it meant to her, she fell on her knees with a bursting prayer of gratitude to the Providence, to the dear lover, between whom her honour was held safe from the despoiler. She never doubted that her Robin meant to share the pledge. Likely his dear spirit was waiting for her now, eager to link with hers in the green woods where first their loves were spoken. Fearful of interruption, she put her lips to the poison, and died with his name on them. That evening came Master Kay to the cell, with a sick smile on his mouth, and in his hands a tray of comfortable things, including a flask of drugged wine. The King’s patience was exhausted. But when he saw what had happened he stole out, and fled to join the refractory Barons, of whom was Fitzwalter, father of Madelon la Belle. And in the meantime Robin did not die. The poison that was to kill him came years later from the hand of his kinswoman, the Prioress of Kirklees. Women will take things so literally. Raleigh “Admit, Captain,” said the scholar, “that Opportunity signifieth by the lexicon a meet or convenient time; and what is time but an abstraction? Wherefore whoso seizeth opportunity seizeth an abstraction, the which has never been held, nor ever will or can be held, to constitute a violation of that social contract which is called the law.” Two men were seated in a bower of the “Ship Aground” at Greenwich. The bright little garden at their feet ran down to a low parapet overlooking the river, whose waters, gay with shipping, sparkled merrily in the June sunshine. Behind them the tinkle and gossip of the inn sounded pleasantly; to their left a small plantation of trees led direct to the boundaries of the royal palace--“Placentia,” or the “Manor of Pleazaunce,” it was called--whose red roofs and bowed Italian windows were plainly visible through the green. A flight of wooden steps in the embankment to their right constituted the public landing-place; and for the rest and everywhere were climbing wood and lawn, tumbled with houses like warm red boulders, and gathered at their summit into that Lancastrian tower which was destined in future ages to blossom into the universal meridian.