Then up the road came riding some of the King's men at headlong speed.

They leaped from their horses and plunged straightway into the thicket after Robin.

But Robin knew the ground better than they did, so crawling here, stooping there, and, anon, running across some little open, he soon left them far behind, coming out, at last, upon another road about eight hundred paces distant from the one he had left.

Here he stood for a moment, listening to the distant shouts of the seven men as they beat up and down in the thickets like hounds that had lost the scent of the quarry.

Then, buckling his belt more tightly around his waist, he ran fleetly down the road toward the eastward and Sherwood.
But Robin had not gone more than three furlongs in that direction when he came suddenly to the brow of a hill, and saw beneath him another band of the King's men seated in the shade along the roadside in the valley beneath.