this dress. Thou mayst keep the cold pieces of the feast, friend, for
I mean to live well and lustily while my money lasts and my clothes are
gay."

So he turned and left Robin and, crossing the stile, was gone, but Robin
heard him singing from beyond the hedge as he strode away:

"_For Polly is smiling and Molly is glad
When the beggar comes in at the door,
And Jack and Dick call him a fine lusty lad,
And the hostess runs up a great score.

"Then hey, Willy Waddykin,
Stay, Billy Waddykin,
And let the brown ale flow free, flow free,
The beggar's the man for me_."

Robin listened till the song ended in the distance, then he also crossed
the stile into the road, but turned his toes away from where the Beggar
had gone. The road led up a gentle hill and up the hill Robin walked, a
half score or more of bags dangling about his legs. Onward he strolled
for a long time, but other adventure he found not. The road was bare
of all else but himself, as he went kicking up little clouds of dust at
each footstep; for it was noontide, the most peaceful time of all the
day, next to twilight. All the earth was silent in the restfulness of
eating time; the plowhorses stood in the furrow munching, with great
bags over their noses holding sweet food, the plowman sat under the
hedge and the plowboy also, and they, too, were munching, each one
holding a great piece of bread in one fist and a great piece of cheese
in the other.

So Robin, with all the empty road to himself, strode along whistling
merrily, his bags and pouches bobbing and dangling at his thighs. At
last he came to where a little grass-grown path left the road and,
passing through a stile and down a hill, led into a little dell and on
across a rill in the valley and up the hill on the other side, till it
reached a windmill that stood on the cap of the rise where the wind bent
the trees in swaying motion. Robin looked at the spot and liked it, and,
for no reason but that his fancy led him, he took the little path and
walked down the grassy sunny slope of the open meadow, and so came to
the little dingle and, ere he knew it, upon four lusty fellows that sat
with legs outstretched around a goodly feast spread upon the ground.

Four merry beggars were they, and each had slung about his neck a little
board that rested upon his breast. One board had written upon it, "I
am blind," another, "I am deaf," another, "I am dumb," and the four