next moment the bowstring rang and the arrow sped down the glade as a
sparrowhawk skims in a northern wind. High leaped the noblest hart of
all the herd, only to fall dead, reddening the green path with his
heart's blood.

"Ha!" cried Robin, "how likest thou that shot, good fellow? I wot the
wager were mine, an it were three hundred pounds."

Then all the foresters were filled with rage, and he who had spoken the
first and had lost the wager was more angry than all.

"Nay," cried he, "the wager is none of thine, and get thee gone,
straightway, or, by all the saints of heaven, I'll baste thy sides until
thou wilt ne'er be able to walk again." "Knowest thou not," said
another, "that thou hast killed the King's deer, and, by the laws of our
gracious lord and sovereign King Harry, thine ears should be shaven
close to thy head?"

"Catch him!" cried a third.

"Nay," said a fourth, "let him e'en go because of his tender years."

Never a word said Robin Hood, but he looked at the foresters with a grim
face; then, turning on his heel, strode away from them down the forest
glade. But his heart was bitterly angry, for his blood was hot and
youthful and prone to boil.

Now, well would it have been for him who had first spoken had he left
Robin Hood alone; but his anger was hot, both because the youth had
gotten the better of him and because of the deep draughts of ale that he