Then, slinging the bag upon his shoulder, he turned away, the Sheriff following him, all too perplexed in mind to speak.  So they went forward until they came to within a furlong of the spot where the Sheriff’s companions were waiting for him.  Then Robin Hood gave the sack of silver back to the Sheriff.  “Take thou thine own again,” he said, “and hearken to me, good Sheriff, take thou a piece of advice with it.  Try thy servants well ere thou dost engage them again so readily.”  Then, turning, he left the other standing bewildered, with the sack in his hands.

The company that waited for the Sheriff were all amazed to see him come out of the forest bearing a heavy sack upon his shoulders; but though they questioned him, he answered never a word, acting like one who walks in a dream.  Without a word, he placed the bag across his nag’s back and then, mounting, rode away, all following him; but all the time there was a great turmoil of thoughts within his head, tumbling one over the other.  And thus ends the merry tale of Little John and how he entered the Sheriff’s service.

Little John and the Tanner of Blyth

One fine day, not long after Little John had left abiding with the Sheriff and had come back, with his worship’s cook, to the merry greenwood, as has just been told, Robin Hood and a few chosen fellows of his band lay upon the soft sward beneath the greenwood tree where they dwelled.  The day was warm and sultry, so that while most of the band were scattered through the forest upon this mission and upon that, these few stout fellows lay lazily beneath the shade of the tree, in the soft afternoon, passing jests among themselves and telling merry stories, with laughter and mirth.

All the air was laden with the bitter fragrance of the May, and all the bosky shades of the woodlands beyond rang with the sweet song of birds—­ the throstle cock, the cuckoo, and the wood pigeon—­and with the song of birds mingled the cool sound of the gurgling brook that leaped out of the forest shades, and ran fretting amid its rough, gray stones across the sunlit open glade before the trysting tree.  And a fair sight was that halfscore of tall, stout yeomen, all clad in Lincoln green, lying beneath the broad-spreading branches of the great oak tree, amid the quivering leaves of which the sunlight shivered and fell in dancing patches upon the grass.

Suddenly Robin Hood smote his knee.

“By Saint Dunstan,” quoth he, “I had nigh forgot that quarter-day cometh on apace, and yet no cloth of Lincoln green in all our store.  It must be looked to, and that in quick season.  Come, busk thee, Little John!  Stir those lazy bones of thine, for thou must get thee straightway to our good gossip, the draper Hugh Longshanks of Ancaster.  Bid him send us straightway twentyscore yards of fair cloth of Lincoln green; and mayhap the journey may take some of the fat from off thy bones, that thou hast gotten from lazy living at our dear Sheriff’s.”