d here
is good company, too; Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, Allan a Dale, Will
Scathelock, Midge, the Miller's son, and others. A score or more of
stout fellows had abided in the forest, with Friar Tuck, to make ready
for the homecoming, but all the rest were gone either with Robin Hood or
Little John.

They traveled onward, Robin following his fancy and the others following
Robin. Now they wended their way through an open dale with cottage and
farm lying therein, and now again they entered woodlands once more.
Passing by fair Mansfield Town, with its towers and battlements and
spires all smiling in the sun, they came at last out of the forest
lands. Onward they journeyed, through highway and byway, through
villages where goodwives and merry lasses peeped through the casements
at the fine show of young men, until at last they came over beyond
Alverton in Derbyshire. By this time high noontide had come, yet they
had met no guest such as was worth their while to take back to Sherwood;
so, coming at last to a certain spot where a shrine stood at the
crossing of two roads, Robin called upon them to stop, for here on
either side was shelter of high hedgerows, behind which was good hiding,
whence they could watch the roads at their ease, while they ate their
midday meal. Quoth merry Robin, "Here, methinks, is good lodging, where
peaceful folk, such as we be, can eat in quietness; therefore we will
rest here, and see what may, perchance, fall into our luck-pot." So they
crossed a stile and came behind a hedgerow where the mellow sunlight was
bright and warm, and where the grass was soft, and there sat them down.
Then each man drew from the pouch that hung beside him that which he
had brought to eat, for a merry walk such as this had been sharpens
the appetite till it is as keen as a March wind. So no more words were
spoken, but each man saved his teeth for better use--munching at brown
crust and cold meat right lustily.

In front of them, one of the highroads crawled up the steep hill and
then dipped suddenly over its crest, sharp-cut with hedgerow and shaggy
grass against the sky. Over the top of the windy hill peeped the eaves
of a few houses of the village that fell back into the valley behind;
there, also, showed the top of a windmill, the sails slowly rising and
dipping from behind the hill against the clear blue sky, as the light
wind moved them with creaking and labored swing.

So the yeomen lay behind the hedge and finis