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JOHN DEANE OF NOTTINGHAM.

CHAPTER I.

Mr. Harwood and Alethea in Sherwood Forest, and Jack Derne's

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First Adventure.

OMANTIC SHERWOOD! Its pristine glories since the days when bold Robin Hood and his merrie men held sway within its borders, and levied taxes from the passers-by, had sadly dwindled even in the year 1696, when our history commences. The woodman's axe had been busy and the plough had gone over the land, and mansions and homesteads had arisen where once flourished the monarchs of the forest, and the huntsman's horn had been wont to sound amid sequestered glades; still many a wide stretch of woodland and moorland remained, over which the fallow deer roamed at freedom, and rows of farspreading trees overhung various by-paths green and narrow winding in all directions, and shaded the king's highway which ran north to York and south to the ancient and pleasant town of Nottingham. And there

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