Wamba, we have said, never ventured to crack a joke, save in a whisper, when he was ten miles from home; and then Sir Wilfrid Ivanhoe was too weary and blue-devilled to laugh; but hunted in silence, moodily bringing down deer and wild-boar with shaft and quarrel.
Then he besought Robin of Huntingdon, the jolly outlaw, nathless, to join him, and go to the help of their fair sire King Richard, with a score or two of lances.

But the Earl of Huntingdon was a very different character from Robin Hood the forester.

There was no more conscientious magistrate in all the county than his lordship: he was never known to miss church or quarter-sessions; he was the strictest game-proprietor in all the Riding, and sent scores of poachers to Botany Bay.

"A man who has a stake in the country, my good Sir Wilfrid," Lord Huntingdon said, with rather a patronizing air (his lordship had grown immensely fat since the King had taken him into grace, and required a horse as strong as an elephant to mount him)--"a man with a stake in the country ought to stay IN the country.

Property has its duties as well as its privileges, and a person of my rank is bound to live on the land from which he gets his living." "'Amen!" sang out the Reverend -- -- Tuck, his lordship's domestic chaplain, who had also grown as sleek as the Abbot of Jorvaulx, who was as prim as a lady in his dress, wore bergamot in his handkerchief, and had his poll shaved and his beard curled every day.