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‘Scarlet! We will call you Scarlet, in memory of your stockings!’ he announced, and held out an enormous hand in token of fellowship.
    And Scarlet, or Will Scarlet, the new-corner became from that day forward.
    * * * * *
    A little while after this Robin called his band together and announced a day of sport and merry-making to celebrate the coming of his kinsman. During the daylight hours there were to be all manner of trials of skill, with prizes for the victors taken from Robin’s share of the treasure store; and at night there would be a feast.
    The day dawned clear, crisp, and frosty; and brisk and blithe were the outlaws as they moved to and fro about the glade in which they were encamped, pacing the distances for the archery butts and setting up the hazel-pricks and gaily coloured popinjays—straw targets they scorned. Many of them were laying wagers with each other as to the results of the long and high jumps, quarterstaff play, throwing the bar, and the five-mile race. Already, under the trees at one end of the glade, the cooks were hard at work preparing the great joints of venison and wild boar flesh, the pies and pasties and sugar-breads on which the whole band would feast that night.
    The archery trials did not take place until late in the day, and only the most skilled among the marksmen took part; for the rest of the band, pleasantly tired after the strenuous day, and knowing that they had no chance of winning the fine quiver of arrows flighted with peacock feathers, which was the prize, preferred to lounge at their ease on the turf and offer helpful advice to the competitors.
    Little John, Much-the-Miller’s-Son, Will Scarlet, Will-the-Bowman, and some half-dozen more—these were thechampions who now took up their stand at one end of the butts and began, each in turn, to shoot at the marks. They shot from two hundred, three hundred, and five hundred feet; and finally came the most difficult shot of all, in which the archer must turn round and loose within three seconds of his turning, at a mark whose distance from himself he must guess.
    Robin stood with one shoulder propped against the trunk of an ash-tree, watching his men—eagerly, despite his lounging pose.
    They shot well, all those sturdy brown-clad archers; but that evening Much-the-Miller’s-Son shot best of them all—better even than Little John. His arrow was the last to fly humming down the glade, and it split the hazel-wand, just as Robin’s shaft had done a few days before in his match with Scarlet. The little man grinned from ear to ear when he saw what he had done, and his comrades crowded round him, thumping him on the back, and loud with congratulations.
    Into the merry group came Robin and laid his hand on his small henchman’s shoulder. ‘God’s love on you, old fellow,’ said he, softly. ‘I would need to ride five hundred miles to find your match.’
    Will Scarlet—brown-clad now, like the rest—looked round, smiling, and shook his head. ‘Master Robin, have you never heard tell of the Curtel Friar of Fountains Dale?’
    Now it was Robin’s turn to shake his head. ‘No, I have heard nothing of any such friar. Is he a marksman, then, despite his monkish habit?’
    ‘That he is,’ replied Scarlet. ‘He could draw your seven-foot bow, or Little John’s yonder, with ease, andhold his own with either of you at a shooting contest. I know him well by repute, for my father’s land marches with that of Fountains Abbey.’
    ‘Yet it seems strange to me that this champion should be a churchman,’ Robin said consideringly.
    And seeing his unbelief, Scarlet laughed. ‘It is many years since Friar Tuck walked the cloisters of Fountains Abbey, for the brethren expelled him long since for his unruly conduct; and I have heard it said that he broke a pewter pot over the Prior’s head and ducked the cellarer in the fish-pond, before he came away. Since then he has dwelt in a stronghold which he built for himself almost at the