e drew his bow and fitted an arrow to it.

"Would you shoot a man who has no arms but a staff?" asked the stranger
in scorn; and with shame Robin laid down his bow, and unbuckled an
oaken stick at his side. "We will fight till one of us falls into the
water," he said; and fight they did, till the stranger planted a blow
so well that Robin rolled over into the river.

[Illustration: Robin Hood's meeting with Little John.]

"You are a brave soul," said he, when he had waded to land, and he blew
a blast with his horn which brought fifty good fellows, clad in green,
to the little bridge.

"Have you fallen into the river that your clothes are wet?" asked one;
and Robin made answer, "No, but this stranger, fighting on the bridge,
got the better of me, and tumbled me into the stream."

At this the foresters seized the stranger, and would have ducked him
had not their leader bade them stop, and begged the stranger to stay
with them and make one of themselves. "Here is my hand," replied the
stranger, "and my heart with it. My name, if you would know it, is
John Little."

"That must be altered," cried Will Scarlett; "we will call a feast, and
henceforth, because he is full seven feet tall and round the waist at
least an ell, he shall be called Little John."

And thus it was done; but at the feast Little John, who always liked to
know exactly what work he had to do, put some questions to Robin Hood.
"Before I join hands with you, tell me first what sort of life is this
you lead? How am I to know whose goods I shall take, and whose I shall
leave? Whom I shall beat, and whom I shall refrain from beating?"

And Robin answered: "Look that you harm not any tiller of the ground,
nor any yeoman of the greenwood--no, nor no Knight nor Squire, unless
you have heard him ill spoken of. But if Bishops or Archbishops come
your way, see that you spoil _them_, and mark that you always hold in
your mind the High Sheriff of Nottingham."

This being settled, Robin Hood declared Little John to be second in
command to himself among the brotherhood of the forest, and the new
outlaw never forgot to "hold in his mind" the High Sheriff of
Nottingham, who was the bitterest enemy the foresters had.

Robin Hood, however, had no liking for a company of idle men about him,
and he at once sent off Little John and Will Scarlett to the great road
known as Watling Street, with orders to hide among the trees and wait
till some adventure might come