"The king would be a good king if he would stay at home and govern his people. But he is off at war all the time, and the nobles and officers he appoints grind the people as a miller grinds the wheat between his great millstones. They rob them continually, and the rich are growing richer and more greedy and the poor growing poorer and more miserable all the time." "When I am a man," said the boy, Robin Hood, "I will make the rich give up a portion of their wealth to the poor, and then all will be provided for." It was not strange, perhaps, considering the evils of the times, that this boy, Robin Hood, when he became a man, did do just what he said, and gathered a band of men about him in the forest whose pledged purpose was to despoil the rich of ill-gotten wealth and lend a helping hand to the poor. The Normans called them "highway robbers," but the common people called them "the merry men of greenwood" and loved them, for they were often helped out of trouble by them. Their robbing was certainly wrong according to our standards, but Robin Hood did not think it was wrong. He took from the rich what they had wrung unjustly from the poor to give it back to the poor, and he thought that it was right. Outlaw though he was, he stood ever for justice and fairness as he saw it. He was loyal to the king, though he resisted the unjust exactions made in the king's name. He was loyal to the church and prayed most reverently for himself and his band. It was his pride that he and his men had never harmed a woman, or burned a haystack, or robbed a husbandman, or hurt a parish priest. The Normans did all these things. Compared with their actions, Robin Hood's standards were wonderfully high. He was trying to be a reformer; and though he went about his work in a wrong way, still he did much good. As the quaint old ballad says about him--in queer spelling which I revise, "Christ have mercy on his soul That died on the rood! For he was a good outlaw And did poor men much good." He was brave and kind and merry always, and all the English people--except England's oppressors--loved him with all their hearts and delighted in his adventures. The story of what he did was put into songs and sung at every fireside; and no man was better loved than this outlaw with a price upon his head. Here are a few stories of Robin Hood and his men, and a great many more may be found which are well worth your reading. WINNING THE SHERIFF'S GOLDEN ARROW