Page 275 - the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood

So Robin, with all the empty road to himself, strode
along whistling merrily, his bags and pouches bobbing
and dangling at his thighs. At last he came to where a little
grass-grown path left the road and, passing through a stile
and down a hill, led into a little dell and on across a rill in
the valley and up the hill on the other side, till it reached a
windmill that stood on the cap of the rise where the wind
bent the trees in swaying motion. Robin looked at the spot
and liked it, and, for no reason but that his fancy led him,
he took the little path and walked down the grassy sunny
slope of the open meadow, and so came to the little dingle
and, ere he knew it, upon four lusty fellows that sat with
legs outstretched around a goodly feast spread upon the
ground.
Four merry beggars were they, and each had slung about
his neck a little board that rested upon his breast. One
board had written upon it, ‘I am blind,’ another, ‘I am deaf,’
another, ‘I am dumb,’ and the fourth, ‘Pity the lame one.’
But although all these troubles written upon the boards
seemed so grievous, the four stout fellows sat around feast-
ing as merrily as though Cain’s wife had never opened the
pottle that held misfortunes and let them forth like a cloud
of flies to pester us.
The deaf man was the first to hear Robin, for he said,
‘Hark, brothers, I hear someone coming.’ And the blind
man was the first to see him, for he said, ‘He is an honest
man, brothers, and one of like craft to ourselves.’ Then the
dumb man called to him in a great voice and said, ‘Wel-
come, brother; come and sit while there is still some of the

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood