That was only at the first, for young Robin very soon became quite
a woodman, learning fast to sound his horn, to shoot and hit his
mark, and to find his way through the great wilderness of open
moorland and shady trees.
But it was more than once that he lost his way, for the trees and
beaten tracks were so much alike and all was so beautiful that it
was easy to wander on and forget all about finding the way back
through the sun-dappled shades.
And so it happened that one morning when the outlaw band had gone
off hunting, to bring back a couple of fat deer for Robin Hood's
larder, young Robin started by himself, bow in hand, down one of
the lovely beech glades, and had soon gone farther than he had been
before.
The squirrels dropped the beech mast and dashed away through the
trees, to chop and scold at him; the rabbits started from out of
the ferns and raced away fast, showing the under part of their
white cotton tails, before they plunged into their shady burrows;
and twice over, as the boy softly passed out of the shade into some
sunny opening, he came upon little groups of deer--beautiful
large-eyed thin-legged does, with their fawns--grazing peacefully
on the soft grass which grew in patches between the tufts of golden
prickly furze, for they were safe enough, the huntsmen being gone
in search of the lordly bucks, with their tall flattened horns if
they were fallow deer, small, round, and sharply pointed if they
were roes.
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