The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: coming to the old woman and patting her kindly upon the shoulder,
he spoke comforting words to her, bidding her cheer up and tell him
her troubles, for that mayhap he might do something to ease them.
At all this the good dame shook her head; but all the same his kind
words did soothe her somewhat, so after a while she told him all
that bore upon her mind. That that morning she had three as fair,
tall sons beside her as one could find in all Nottinghamshire, but that
they were now taken from her, and were like to be hanged straightway;
that, want having come upon them, her eldest boy had gone out,
the night before, into the forest, and had slain a hind in the moonlight;
that the King's rangers had followed the blood upon the grass
 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |