All his surmises were justified.  He saw a great hulking youth of heavy and dull countenance, carrying a rifle awkwardly, his place obviously around some town and not in the depths of a forest, looking for a wary enemy, who knew more of the wilderness than he could ever learn in all his life.  Harry saw that he was perspiring freely and that he looked more like the hunted than the hunter.  His eyes expressed bewilderment.  He was obviously lonely and apprehensive, not because he was a coward, but because the situation was so strange to him.

Besides his rifle he carried a large knapsack, so much distended that Harry knew it to be full of food.  It was this that decided him.  A soldier, like an army, must travel on his stomach, and he wanted that knapsack.  Moreover he meant to get it.  He leveled his shotgun and called in a low tone, but a tone so sharp that it could be heard distinctly by the one to whom it was addressed: 

“Throw up your hands at once!”

The man threw them up so abruptly that the rifle fell from his shoulder into the bushes, and he turned around, staring face toward the point from which the command had come.  Harry saw at once that he was of foreign birth, probably.  The features inclined to the Slav type, although Slavs were not then common in this country, even in the mill towns of the North.

“Are you an American?” asked Harry, standing up.

“All but two years of my life.”

“The first two years then, as I see you speak good English.  What’s your name?”

“Michael Stanislav.”

“Do you think that anybody named Michael Stanislav has the right to interfere in the quarrel of the Northern and Southern states?  Don’t the Stanislavs have trouble enough in the country where the Stanislavs grow?”

The big youth stared at him without understanding.

“Do you know who I am?” asked Harry, severely.

“The running rebel that we all look for.”

“Rebels don’t run.  Besides, there are no rebels.  Anyway I’m not the man you’re looking for.  My name is Robin Hood.”

“Robin Hood?”

“Yes, Robin Hood!  Didn’t you ever hear of him?”

“Never.”

“Then you have the honor of hearing of him and meeting him at the same time.  As I said, my name is Robin Hood and my trade is that of a benevolent robber.  I lie around in the greenwood, and I don’t work.  I’ve a lot of followers, Friar Tuck and others, but they’re away for a while.  They’re as much opposed to work as I am.  That’s why they’re my followers.  We’re the friends of the poor, because they have nothing we want, and we’re the enemies of the rich because they have a lot we do want and that we often take.  Still, we couldn’t get along very well, if there were no rich for us to rob.  It’s like taking sugar water from a maple tree.  We won’t take too much, because it would kill the tree and we want to take its sugar water again, and many times.  Do you understand?”