Little John to bring all my merry men to
look for you, and Maid Marian here would sit at home and cry till
you were found."

"Then I will not lose myself," said Robin. And he always
remembered his promise when he took his bow and arrows and, with
his sword hanging from his belt, went away from the outlaws' camp
for a long ramble.

His bow was just as high as he was himself, that being the rule in
archery, and his arrows, beautifully made by Little John, were just
half the length of his bow.

As to his sword, that was a dagger in a green shark-skin sheath
given to him by Robin Hood, who said rightly enough that it was
quite big enough for him.

Maid Marian found a suitable buckle for the belt, one which Little
John cut out of a very soft piece of deer-skin, the same skin
forming the cross-belt which went over the boy's shoulder and
supported his horn.

For he was supplied with a horn as well, this being necessary in
the forest, and Robin Hood himself taught him in the evenings how
to blow the calls by fitting his lips to the mouthpiece and
altering the tone by placing his hand inside the silver rim which
formed the mouth.

It was not easy, but the little fellow soon learned. All the same,
though, he made some strange sounds at first, bad enough, Little
John declared, to give one of Maid Marian's cows the tooth-ache,
and frighten the herds of deer farther and farther away.

That was only at the first, for young Robin very soon became quite
a woodman, learning fast to sound his horn, to shoot and hit his
mark, and to find his way through the great wilderness of open
moorland and shady trees.

But it was more than once that he lost his way, for the trees and
beaten tracks were so much alike and all was so beautiful that it
was easy to wander on and forget all about finding the way back
through the sun-dappled shades.

And so it happened that one morning when the outlaw band had gone
off hunting, to bring back a couple of fat deer for Robin Hood's
larder, young Robin started by himself, bow in hand, down one of
the lovely beech glades, and had soon gone farther than he had been
before.

The squirrels dropped the beech mast and dashed away through the
trees, to chop and scold at him; the rabbits started from out of
the ferns and raced away fast, showing the under part of their
white cotton tails, before they plunged into their shady burrows;
and twice over, as the boy softly passed out of the shade into som