This is the sequel to The Prince of Thieves which was Dumas' first book about Robin Hood. The adventurous life of the gallant Outlaw, Robin Hood, has long been a favorite theme of song and story in England. True, the Historian must often ask in vain for documents verifying the wild doings of the famous Robber. But there is a mass of legend referring to our Hero which bears the seal of genuineness upon its face and throws a flood of light on the manners and customs of his epoch. Robin Hood's biographers are not agreed as to the circumstances of his birth. While some assign him a noble origin, others dispute his title to be called the Earl of Huntingdon. Be this as it may, Robin Hood was the last Saxon who tried seriously to resist the Norman rule. The series of events forming the History we have undertaken to relate, probable and possible as they may appear, are nevertheless perhaps mere products of popular fancy, for indeed material proof of their authenticity is utterly and entirely wanting. The widespread celebrity of the Gallant Outlaw has come down to us dressed in all the fresh and brilliant hues of the first days of its origination. There is not an English author but devotes a good word or two to him. Cordun, an ecclesiastical writer of the Fourteenth Century, styles him ille famosissimus sicarius-" the most famous of bandits." Major describes him as " that most gentle Prince of Thieves." The author of a very curious Latin poem, dating from 1304, compares him with William Wallace, the hero of Scotland. The celebrated Camden says of him: "Robin Hood is the most gallant of brigands." Last but not least, Shakespeare himself, in As You Like It, desiring to portray the manner of life of the Exiled Duke and suggest how happily he is circumstanced, writes:- "They say, he is already in the forest of Arden (Ardennes), and a many merry men with him; and there they live like old Robin Hood of England; they say, many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." To enumerate the names of all the authors who have eulogized Robin Hood would only exhaust the reader's patience; enough to say that in every one of the legends, songs, ballads, and chronicles that speak of him, he is universally represented as a man of noble spirit and an unequal led courage and intrepidity. He was adored not only by his companions (he was never once betrayed), but likewise by all the inhabitants of Nottinghamshire. Robin Hood affords the sole instance of one who, without canonisation as a Saint, yet has his festival. Down to the end of the Sixteenth Century, people, kings, princes, and magistrates, both in Scotland and England, celebrated our Hero's feastday by games established in his honor. Sir Walter Scott's fine romance of Ivanhoe has made Robin Hood's name familiar in France as in England. But properly to appreciate the history of his band of outlaws, we must bear in mind that, after the conquest of England by William, the Norman forest laws punished poachers by blinding and castration. The double penalty, which meant a fate worse than death, drove the unhappy wretches who had rendered themselves liable to its horrors to fly to the woods. Thus their very means of livelihood came to depend on the exercise of the same acts which had put them outside the law. The majority of these outlawed poachers belonged to the Saxon stock, dispossessed by the Conquest; so that to rob a rich Norman Baron was, after all, only recovering the property of which their fathers had been deprived. This fact, fully explained in the Epic romance of Ivanhoe and in the present account of the exploits of Robin Hood, should prevent our ever confounding these amiable outlaws with common thieves and cut-throats.