One day Robin was walking alone in the wood, and reached a river which
was spanned by a very narrow bridge, over which one man only could
pass. In the midst stood a stranger, and Robin bade him go back and
let him go over. 'I am no man of yours,' was all the answer Robin got,
and in anger he drew his bow and fitted an arrow to it. 'Would you
shoot a man who has no arms but a staff?' asked the stranger in scorn;
and with shame Robin laid down his bow, and unbuckled an oaken stick
at his side. 'We will fight till one of us falls into the water,' he
said; and fight they did, till the stranger planted a blow so well
that Robin rolled over into the river. 'You are a brave soul,' said
he, when he had waded to land, and he blew a blast with his horn which
brought fifty good fellows, clad in green, to the little bridge. 'Have
you fallen into the river that your clothes are wet?' asked one; and
Robin made answer, 'No, but this stranger, fighting on the bridge, got
the better of me, and tumbled me into the stream.'
At this the foresters seized the stranger, and would have ducked him
had not their leader bade them stop, and begged the stranger to stay
with them and make one of themselves. 'Here is my hand,' replied the
stranger, 'and my heart with it. My name, if you would know it, is
John Little.'
'That must be altered,' cried Will Scarlett; 'we will call a feast,
and henceforth, because he is full seven feet tall and round the waist
at least an ell, he shall be called Little John.'
And thus it was done; but at the feast Little John, who always liked
to know exactly what work he had to do, put some questions to Robin
Hood. 'Before I join hands with you, tell me first what sort of life
is this you lead? How am I to know whose goods I shall take, and whose
I shall leave? Whom I shall beat, and whom I shall refrain from
beating?'
And Robin answered: 'Look that you harm not any tiller of the ground,
nor any yeoman of the greenwood--no, nor no Knight nor Squire, unless
you have heard him ill spoken of. But if Bishops or Archbishops come
your way, see that you spoil _them_, and mark that you always hold in
your mind the High Sheriff of Nottingham.'
This being settled, Robin Hood declared Little John to be second in
command to himself among the brotherhood of the forest, and the new
outlaw never forgot to 'hold in his mind' the High Sheriff of
Nottingham, who was the bitterest enemy the foresters had.