Children's Literature Part 175

"Do you not know me?" cried the proud king. "I am your master. I am the king. I am the emperor. Let me pa.s.s"; and he would have thrust him aside. But the porter was a strong man; he stood in the doorway, and would not let the proud king enter.

"You my master! you the emperor! poor fool, look here!" and he held the proud king by the arm while he pointed to a hall beyond. There sat the emperor on his throne, and by his side was the queen.

"Let me go to her! she will know me," cried the proud king, and he tried to break away from the porter. The noise without was heard in the hall.

The n.o.bles came out, and last of all came the emperor and the queen.

When the proud king saw these two, he could not speak. He was choked with rage and fear, and he knew not what.

"You know me!" at last he cried. "I am your lord and husband."

The queen shrank back.

"Friends," said the man who stood by her, "what shall be done to this wretch?"

"Kill him," said one.

"Put out his eyes," said another.

"Beat him," said a third.

Then they all hustled the proud king out of the palace court. Each one gave him a blow, and so he was thrust out, and the door was shut behind him.

The proud king fled, he knew not whither. He wished he were dead. By and by he came to the lake where he had bathed. He sat down on the sh.o.r.e. It was like a dream, but he knew he was awake, for he was cold and hungry and faint. Then he knelt on the ground and beat his breast, and said:

"I am no emperor. I am no king. I am a poor, sinful man. Once I thought there was no one greater than I, on earth or in heaven. Now I know that I am nothing, and there is no one so poor and so mean. G.o.d forgive me for my pride."

As he said this, tears stood in his eyes. He wiped them away and rose to his feet. Close by him he saw the clothes which he had once laid aside.

Near at hand was his horse, eating the soft gra.s.s. The king put on his clothes; he mounted his horse and rode to his palace. As he drew near, the door opened and servants came forth. One held his horse; another helped him dismount. The porter bowed low.

"I marvel I did not see thee pa.s.s out, my lord," he said.

The king entered, and again saw the n.o.bles in the great hall. There stood the queen also, and by her side was the man who called himself emperor. But the queen and the n.o.bles did not look at him; they looked at the king, and came forward to meet him.

This man also came forward, but he was clad in shining white, and not in the robes of the emperor. The king bowed his head before him.

"I am thy angel," said the man. "Thou wert proud, and made thyself to be set on high. Therefore thou hast been brought low. I have watched over thy kingdom. Now I give it back to thee, for thou art once again humble, and the humble only are fit to rule."

Then the angel disappeared. No one else heard his voice, and the n.o.bles thought the king had bowed to them. So the king once more sat on the throne, and ruled wisely and humbly ever after.

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Eva March Tappan (1854--) has compiled many books for children, including the popular collection in ten volumes called _The Children's Hour_. Among her most delightful books is _Robin Hood: His Book_, from which the following story is taken, (by permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co., Boston). Some few moralists have been distressed about giving stories of an outlaw to children, but Robin Hood was really the champion of the people against tyrannous oppression and injustice.

This is the fact that children never miss, and the thing that endears Robin and his followers in Lincoln green. There is, of course, the further interesting fact that these stories take place out in the open and have the charm that comes from adventures and wanderings through the secrecies of ancient Sherwood Forest. Against this outdoor background are displayed the good old "virtues of courage, forbearance, gentleness, courtesy, justice, and championship."

ROBIN AND THE MERRY LITTLE OLD WOMAN

EVA MARCH TAPPAN

"Monday I wash and Tuesday I iron, Wednesday I cook and I mend; Thursday I brew and Friday I sweep, And baking day brings the end."

So sang the merry little old woman as she sat at her wheel and spun; but when she came to the last line she really could not help pushing back the flax-wheel and springing to her feet. Then she held out her skirt and danced a gay little jig as she sang,--

"Hey down, down, an a down!"

She curtseyed to one side of the room and then to another, and before she knew it she was curtseying to a man who stood in the open door.

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the merry little old woman. "Whatever shall I do? An old woman ought to sit and spin and not be dancing like a young girl.

Oh, but it's Master Robin! Glad am I to set eyes on you, Master Robin.

Come in, and I'll throw my best cloak over the little stool for a cushion. Don't be long standing on the threshold, Master Robin."

"It'll mayhap come to pa.s.s that I'll wish I had something to stand on,"

said Robin, grimly, "for the proud bishop is in the forest, and he's after me with all his men. It's night and day that he's been following me, and now he's caught me surely. You've no meal chest, have you, and you've no press, and you've no feather-bed that'll hide me? There's but the one wee bit room, and there's not even a mousehole."

The little woman's heart beat fast. What could she do?

"I mind me well of a Sat.u.r.day night," said she, "when I'd but little firewood and it was bitter cold, that you and your men brought me such fine logs as the great folks at the hall don't have; and then you came in yourself and gave me a pair of shoon and some brand-new hosen, all soft and fine and woolly--I don't believe the king himself has such a pair--oh, Master Robin, I've thought of something. Give me your mantle of green and your fine gray tunic, and do you put on my kirtle and jacket and gown, and tie my red and blue kerchief over your head--you gave it to me yourself, you did; it was on Easter Day in the morning--and do you sit down at the wheel and spin. See, you put your foot on the treadle _so_, to turn the wheel, and you twist the flax with your fingers _so_. Don't you get up, but just turn the wheel and grumble and mumble to yourself."

It was not long before the bishop and all his men came riding up to the little old woman's house. The bishop thrust open the door and called:--

"Old woman, what have you done with Robin Hood?" but Robin sat grumbling and mumbling at the wheel and answered never a word to the proud bishop.

"She's mayhap daft," said one of the bishop's men. "We'll soon find him"; and in a minute he had looked up the chimney and behind the dresser and under the wooden bedstead. Then he turned to the corner cupboard.

"You're daft yourself," said the bishop, "to look in that little place for a strong man like Robin." And all the time the spinner at the wheel sat grumbling and mumbling. It was a queer thread that was wound on the spool, but no one thought of that. It was Robin that they wanted, and they cared little what kind of thread an old woman in a cottage was a-spinning.

"He's here, your Reverence," called a man who had opened the lower door of the corner cupboard.

"Bring him out and set him on the horse," ordered the bishop, "and see to it that you treat him like a wax candle in the church. The king's bidden that the thief and outlaw be brought to him, and I well know he'll hang the rogue on a gallows so high that it will show over the whole kingdom; but he has given orders that no one shall have the reward if the rascal has but a bruise on his finger, save that it came in a fair fight."

So the merry little old woman in Robin's tunic and Robin's green cloak was set gently on a milk-white steed. The bishop himself mounted a dapple-gray, and down the road they went.

It was the cheeriest party that one can imagine. The bishop went laughing all the way for pure delight that he had caught Robin Hood. He told more stories than one could make up in an age of leap-years, and they were all about where he went and what he did in the days before he became bishop. The men were so happy at the thought of having the great reward the king had offered that they laughed at the bishop's stories louder than any one had ever laughed at them before. And as for the merry little old woman, she had the gayest time of all, though she had to keep her face m.u.f.fled in her hood, and couldn't laugh aloud the least bit, and couldn't jump down from the great white horse and dance the gay little jig that her feet were fairly aching to try.

While the merry little old woman was riding off with the bishop and his men, Robin sat at the flax-wheel and spun and spun till he could no longer hear the beat of the horses' hoofs on the hard ground. No time had he to take off the kirtle and the jacket and the kerchief of red and blue, for no one knew when the proud bishop might find out that he had the wrong prisoner, and would come galloping back to the cottage on the border of the forest.

"If I can only get to my good men and true!" thought Robin; and he sprang up from the little flax-wheel with the distaff in his hand, and ran out of the open door.

All the long day had Robin been away from his bowmen, and as the twilight time drew near, they were more and more fearful of what might have befallen him. They went to the edge of the forest, and there they sat with troubled faces.

"I've heard that the sheriff was seen but two days ago on the eastern side of the wood," said Much the miller's son.

"And the proud bishop's not in his palace," muttered Will Scarlet.

"Where he's gone I know not, but may the saints keep Master Robin from meeting him. He hates us men of the greenwood worse than the sheriff does, and he'd hang any one of us to the nearest oak."

"He'd not hang Master Robin," declared Much the miller's son, "for the bishop likes good red gold, and the king's offered a great reward for him alive and unhurt." The others laughed, but in a moment they were grave again, and peered anxiously through the trees in one way and then in another, while nearer came the twilight.

"There are folks who say the forest is haunted," said Little John. "I never saw anything, but one night when I was close to the little black pond that lies to the westward, I heard a cry that wasn't from bird or beast; I know that."