s of strength and many tough bouts at wrestling and the
quarterstaff. For five years he had held the mid-country champion belt
for wrestling, till the great Adam o' Lincoln cast him in the ring and
broke one of his ribs; but at quarterstaff he had never yet met his
match in all the country about. Besides all this, he dearly loved the
longbow, and a sly jaunt in the forest when the moon was full and the
dun deer in season; so that the King's rangers kept a shrewd eye upon
him and his doings, for Arthur a Bland's house was apt to have aplenty
of meat in it that was more like venison than the law allowed.

Now Arthur had been to Nottingham Town the day before Little John set
forth on his errand, there to sell a halfscore of tanned cowhides. At
the dawn of the same day that Little John left the inn, he started from
Nottingham, homeward for Blyth. His way led, all in the dewy morn, past
the verge of Sherwood Forest, where the birds were welcoming the lovely
day with a great and merry jubilee. Across the Tanner's shoulders was
slung his stout quarterstaff, ever near enough to him to be gripped
quickly, and on his head was a cap of doubled cowhide, so tough that it
could hardly be cloven even by a broadsword.

"Now," quoth Arthur a Bland to himself, when he had come to that part of
the road that cut through a corner of the forest, "no doubt at this time
of year the dun deer are coming from the forest depths nigher to the
open meadow lands. Mayhap I may chance to catch a sight of the dainty
brown darlings thus early in the morn." For there was nothing he loved
better than to look upon a tripping herd of deer, even when he could not
tickle their ribs with a clothyard shaft. Accordingly, quitting the
path, he went peeping this way and that through the underbrush, spying
now here and now there, with all the wiles of a master of woodcraft, and
of one who had more than once donned a doublet of Lincoln green.

Now as Little John stepped blithely along, thinking of nothing but of
such things as the sweetness of the hawthorn buds that bedecked the
hedgerows, or gazing upward at the lark, that, springing from the dewy
grass, hung aloft on quivering wings in the yellow sunlight, pouring
forth its song that fell like a falling star from the sky, his luck led
him away from the highway, not far from the spot where Arthur a Bland
was peeping this way and that through the leaves of the thickets.
Hearing a rustling of the branches, Little J