"Chestnuts—eating ones."
"Yes, I know where you got them," said Little-John, "but they're no good. Look."
He tore one of the husks open, and laid bare the rich brown nut; but it was, as he said, good for nothing, there being no hard sweet kernel within, nothing but soft pithy woolly stuff.
"No good at all," continued the great forester; "but I'll show you a tree which bears good ones, only the nuts are better if they're left till they drop out of their husks."
"And then the pigs get them," said Robin.
"Then you must get up before the pigs, and be first. Halloa! What now?"
For a horn was blown at a distance, and the men under the great oak tree sprang to their feet, while Robin Hood came out to see what the signal meant.
Young Robin, who was now quite accustomed to the foresters' ways, caught up his bow like the rest, and stood looking eagerly in the direction from which the cheery sounding notes of the horn were blown.
He had not long to wait, for half a dozen of the merry men in green came marching towards them with a couple of prisoners, each having his hands fastened behind him with a bow-string and a broad bandage tied over his eyes, so that they should not know their way again to the outlaws' stronghold.
"Prisoners!" said young Robin.