s boots!"

Whatever Robin thought upon seeing the stranger's strength, he uttered
not a word and budged not an inch. He only put his oak staff at parry as
the other took his stand.

There was a threefold surprise that day, by the brookside. The stranger
and Robin and Little John in the bushes all found a combat that upset
all reckoning. The stranger for all his easy strength and cool nerve
found an antagonist who met his blows with the skill of a woodman. Robin
found the stranger as hard to hit as though fenced in by an oak hedge.
While Little John rolled over and over in silent joy.

Back and forth swayed the fighters, their cudgels pounding this way and
that, knocking off splinters and bark, and threatening direst damage to
bone and muscle and skin. Back and forth they pranced kicking up a cloud
of dust and gasping for fresh air. From a little way off you would have
vowed that these two men were trying to put out a fire, so thickly
hung the cloud of battle over them. Thrice did Robin smite the scarlet
man--with such blows that a less stout fellow must have bowled over.
Only twice did the scarlet man smite Robin, but the second blow was
like to finish him. The first had been delivered over the knuckles, and
though 'twas a glancing stroke it well nigh broke Robin's fingers, so
that he could not easily raise his staff again. And while he was dancing
about in pain and muttering a dust-covered oath, the other's staff came
swinging through the cloud at one side--zip!--and struck him under the
arm. Down went Robin as though he were a nine-pin--flat down into the
dust of the road. But despite the pain he was bounding up again like an
India rubber man to renew the attack, when Little John interfered.

"Hold!" said he, bursting out of the bushes and seizing the stranger's
weapon. "Hold, I say!"

"Nay," retorted the stranger quietly, "I was not offering to smite him
while he was down. But if there be a whole nest of you hatching here by
the waterside, cluck out the other chicks and I'll make shift to fight
them all."

"Not for all the deer in Sherwood!" cried Robin. "You are a good fellow
and a gentleman. I'll fight no more with you, for verily I feel sore in
wrist and body. Nor shall any of mine molest you henceforth."

Sooth to say, Robin did not look in good fighting trim. His clothes were
coated with dirt, one of his hosen had slipped halfway down from his
knee, the sleeve of his jerkin was split, and his face was str