give a helping hand in need and trouble, and would return to them that
which had been unjustly taken from them. Besides this, they swore never
to harm a child nor to wrong a woman, be she maid, wife, or widow; so
that, after a while, when the people began to find that no harm was
meant to them, but that money or food came in time of want to many a
poor family, they came to praise Robin and his merry men, and to tell
many tales of him and of his doings in Sherwood Forest, for they felt
him to be one of themselves.

Up rose Robin Hood one merry morn when all the birds were singing
blithely among the leaves, and up rose all his merry men, each fellow
washing his head and hands in the cold brown brook that leaped laughing
from stone to stone. Then said Robin, "For fourteen days have we seen no
sport, so now I will go abroad to seek adventures forthwith. But tarry
ye, my merry men all, here in the greenwood; only see that ye mind well
my call. Three blasts upon the bugle horn I will blow in my hour of
need; then come quickly, for I shall want your aid."

So saying, he strode away through the leafy forest glades until he had
come to the verge of Sherwood. There he wandered for a long time,
through highway and byway, through dingly dell and forest skirts. Now he
met a fair buxom lass in a shady lane, and each gave the other a merry
word and passed their way; now he saw a fair lady upon an ambling pad,
to whom he doffed his cap, and who bowed sedately in return to the fair
youth; now he saw a fat monk on a pannier-laden ass; now a gallant
knight, with spear and shield and armor that flashed brightly in the
sunlight; now a page clad in crimson; and now a stout burgher from good
Nottingham Town, pacing along with serious footsteps; all these sights
he saw, but adventure found he none. At last he took a road by the
forest skirts, a bypath that dipped toward a broad, pebbly stream