Thus they rode slowly onward, talking about these old, familiar things; old and yet new, for they found more in them than they had ever thought of before. Thus at last they came to the open glade, and the broad, wide-spreading greenwood tree which was their home for so many years. Neither of the two spoke when they stood beneath that tree. Robin looked all about him at the well-known things, so like what they used to be and yet so different; for, where once was the bustle of many busy fellows was now the quietness of solitude; and, as he looked, the woodlands, the greensward, and the sky all blurred together in his sight through salt tears, for such a great yearning came upon him as he looked on these things (as well known to him as the fingers of his right hand) that he could not keep back the water from his eyes.
That morning he had slung his good old bugle horn over his shoulder, and now, with the yearning, came a great longing to sound his bugle once more. He raised it to his lips; he blew a blast. “Tirila, lirila,” the sweet, clear notes went winding down the forest paths, coming back again from the more distant bosky shades in faint echoes of sound, “Tirila, lirila, tirila, lirila,” until it faded away and was lost.