And he ended his speech with the sonorous cry of his craft.
By this time the whole band was laughing uproariously at the tinker’s talk.
“What say you, fellows?” asked Robin. “Would not this tinker be a good recruit?”
“That he would!” answered Will Scarlet, clapping the new man on the back. “He will keep Friar Tuck and Much the miller’s son from having the blues.”
So amid great merriment and right good fellowship the outlaws shook Middle by the hand, and he took oath of fealty, and thought no more of the Sheriff’s daughter.
CHAPTER XV
HOW ROBIN HOOD WAS TANNED OF THE TANNER
In Nottingham there lived a jolly tanner,
With a hey down, down, a down down!
His name was Arthur-a-Bland,
There was ne’er a squire in Nottinghamshire
Dare bid bold Arthur stand.
And as he went forth, in a summer’s morning,
With a hey down, down, a down down!
To the forest of merrie Sherwood,
To view the red deer, that range here and there,
There met he with bold Robin Hood.
The Sheriff’s daughter bided for several days in the faint hope that she might hear tidings of the prattling tinker. But never a word heard she, and she was forced to the conclusion that her messenger had not so much as laid eyes upon the outlaw. Little recked she that he was, even then, grinding sword-points and sharpening arrows out in the good greenwood, while whistling blithely or chatting merrily with the good Friar Tuck.