his master lay, white, with
nigh all his blood gone from him.

'I crave a boon of you, dear master,' cried Little John.

'And what is that boon,' said Robin Hood, 'which Little John begs of
me?' And Little John answered, 'It is to burn fair Kirkley Hall, and
all the nunnery.'

But Robin Hood, in spite of the wrong that had been done him, would
not listen to Little John's cry for revenge. 'I never hurt a woman in
all my life,' he said, 'nor a man that was in her company. But now my
time is done, that know I well; so give me my bow and a broad arrow,
and wheresoever it falls there shall my grave be digged. Lay a green
sod under my head and another at my feet, and put beside me my bow,
which ever made sweetest music to my ears, and see that green and
gravel make my grave. And, Little John, take care that I have length
enough and breadth enough to lie in.' So he loosened his last arrow
from the string and then died, and where the arrow fell Robin was
buried.

[Illustration: ROBIN HOOD SHOOTS HIS LAST ARROW]

THE STORY OF GRETTIR THE STRONG

_THE STORY OF GRETTIR THE STRONG_

About nine hundred years ago, more or less, there lived in Iceland, at
a homestead called Biarg, two old folks named Asmund the Greyhaired
and his wife Asdis. At the time our story begins they had two sons,
Atli the eldest, and Grettir, besides daughters; sixteen years later
another son was born to them, named Illugi. Atli was a general
favourite, in disposition good-natured and yielding, in this the very
opposite of Grettir, who held to his own way, and was, besides,
silent, reserved, and rough in manner. But he is described as fair to
look on, broad-faced, short-faced, red-haired and much freckled, not
of quick growth in his childhood. There was little love lost between
him and his father, but his mother loved the boy right well. So
matters sped till Grettir was ten years old, when, one day, his father
told him to go and watch the geese on the farm, fifty of them, besides
many goslings. The boy went, but with an ill grace, and shortly
afterwards the geese were found all dead or dying, with many of their
necks wrung, at which Asmund was mightily vexed. Again, one evening,
being cold, he asked the boy to warm him by rubbing his back, but
Grettir, taking up a wool-carder's comb, dropped it down his father's
back. The old man was furiously angry, and would have beaten Grettir,
had he not run away, while Asdis, though vexed, tried her bes