The face of his worship grows graver and graver, As the parties detail Robin's shameful behaviour; Mister Buzzard, the clerk, while the tale is reciting, Sits down to reduce the affair into writing, With all proper diction, And due "legal fiction;" Viz.: "That he, the said prisoner, as clearly was shown, Conspiring with folks to deponents unknown, With divers, that is to say, two thousand people, In two thousand hats, each hat peak'd like a steeple, With force and with arms, And with sorcery and charms, Upon two thousand brooms; Enter'd four thousand rooms, To wit, two thousand pantries, and two thousand cellars, Put in bodily fear twenty thousand in-dwellers, And with sundry,--that is to say, two thousand,--forks, Drew divers,--that is to say, ten thousand--corks, And, with malice prepense, down their two thousand throttles, Emptied various,--that is to say, ten thousand--bottles; All in breach of the peace,--moved by Satan's malignity-- And in spite of King James, and his Crown, and his Dignity." At words so profound Rob gazes around, But no glance sympathetic to cheer him is found. --No glance, did I say? Yes, one!--Madge Gray!-- She is there in the midst of the crowd standing by, And she gives him one glance from her coal-black eye, One touch to his hand, and one word to his ear,-- (That's a line which I've stolen from Sir Walter, I fear,)-- While nobody near Seems to see her or hear; As his worship takes up, and surveys, with a strict eye, The broom now produced as the _corpus delicti_, Ere his fingers can clasp, It is snatch'd from his grasp, The end poked in his chest with a force makes him gasp, And, despite the decorum so due to the _Quorum_, His worship's upset, and so too is his jorum And Madge is astride on the broomstick before 'em. "_Hocus Pocus!_ Quick, _Presto!_ and _Hey Cockalorum! Mount, mount for your life, Rob!--Sir Justice, adieu!-- --Hey up the chimney-pot! hey after you!" Through the mystified group, With a halloo and a whoop, Madge on the pommel, and Robin _en croupe_, The pair through the air ride as if in a chair, While the party below stand mouth open and stare! "Clean bumbaized" and amazed, and fix'd, all the room stick, "Oh! what's gone with Robin,--and Madge,--and the broomstick?" Ay, "what's gone" indeed, Ned?--of what befell Madge Gray, and the broomstick, I never heard tell: But Robin was found, that morn, on the ground, In yon old grey Ruin again, safe and sound, Except that at first he complained much of thirst, And a shocking bad headache, of all ills the worst, And close by his knee A flask you might see, But an empty one, smelling of _eau-de-vie_.