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searched for; yes, he might,” deSteny finished for the Red Friar.
    “Lamentably,” said the Red Friar.
    DeSteny put the shovel back on the wall. “We can leave now.”
    “Not quite yet,” said the Red Friar, opening the pyx again and taking the time to mark the cross with the Host on the foreheads of each of the company. That done, he nodded to deSteny and scrambled onto his mule.
    Last of all, deSteny mounted his sorrel mare. “For Nottingham,” he said, and set off along the worn track.

How deSteny returned to Nottingham

    BY THE TIME the Sheriffs party reached the main road, Sherwood was darkening, the long shadows making the undergrowth denser than it was, and turning the canopy of beech and oak to a cloaking mass more menacing than storm clouds. With the fading of the day came a wind, blowing as if to extinguish the last of the light; it was cold and cutting, touching the men to the marrow, leaving them worn out with shivering. The undergrowth rustled and the branches flailed. In addition, the men were growing increasingly uneasy, and their mounts shared their distress, shying at noises and balking at shadows more often than they usually did. A fox darting in a thicket or the whistle of a falcon overhead made horses and riders start in alarm, and the mules became more fractious.
    “I don’t like this,” muttered Wroughton as he watched a badger scurry out of their way. “It’s too late. We should have left Chefford sooner. It will be dusk by the time we are out of the forest.”
    “Possibly,” said deSteny. “But we must keep on, or we will have to camp for the night.” His sorrel mare was restive, and he did his best to calm her. It would not do to have her bolt here in the forest.
    “How far is it to Nottingham?” asked the Red Friar from his place at the rear. “We can’t have missed the turning, can we?”
    “No more than a league or so,” said Chilton in the lead, his words sounding harsh. “We will be at the edge of the trees shortly.”
    “And not a moment too soon. Look at the sky,” said Wroughton with feeling, nodding once toward the fading sunset streamers in the clouds over the trees. He crossed himself and pressed his legs into his horse’s sides. The horse walked faster.
    The other men-at-arms were doing the same thing, urging their horses to pick up speed to hasten their departure from the encroaching darkness. DeSteny lifted his hand to try to hold them back, for he feared that once their flight began, they would not be easily stopped, and would end in a rout. His efforts were useless, for his mare had caught the apprehension of the others around her and was anxious to get out of the trees as the most skittish of the men. When deSteny tried to hold her in, she began to sweat and tremble, pulling on the rein and tossing her head.
    At the rear of the group the Red Friar’s mule adamantly refused to walk any faster no matter what the monk did to urge him on. Gradually the distance between the men-at-arms and the Trinitarian increased so he was a length, then two, then five behind the rest. When a bend in the road was reached, the party from Nottingham vanished altogether, and it seemed to the Red Friar that the only sound in all of Sherwood Forest was the determined plod of his mule’s hooves.
    How dark it had become! Vast shadows loomed around him, devouring the last of the daylight. The Red Friar clutched the pyx more tightly, trying to take confidence from the presence of the sacred article. He muttered part of a Psalm but stopped when he heard the tremor in his voice. Then he tried to make his mule walk faster and attempted to shout to the Sheriff and his men, only to discover his throat was too dry and too tight to do more than croak. In growing terror he began to recite his prayers: “Salva me, Domine, de morte et daemonae. Libera me de ira . . . iram? Sequestra me de . . .”He could not keep the Latin phrases in his mind, though he tried over and over, unable to recall