never had the squirms, as a body, succeeded in scoring points over the merry men. duffers at football and cricket, which they only played because both were compulsory, slackers in the gymnasium, and too flabby to shine in athletic sports, their chief recreations were indoor ones which did not fret their fat, such as chess, draughts, and dominoes.

at these three games they frequently played to pass away the long winter evenings, while other boys indulged in gymnastics and boxing. consequently, quite a number of them became, through constant practice, fairly proficient in table games—certainly far cleverer at them than other foxes of their own age, who seldom cared to play with them.

"i've got a rattling good idea for taking the starch out of robin and his gang," osbody announced to a little group of squirms. "their beastly heads are swollen to the size of balloons over the flukey way they nabbed the burglars. odious to see them swanking about, isn't it, chaps?"

"makes me sick," agreed grain.

"positively nauseating to hear old man wykeham puffing 'em up sky-high," said niblo. "special holiday in their honour, indeed!"

"i vote we all stick in the class-room and swot that day, just to show our contempt for it," suggested vinns, a boy with a rather uncanny gift for mathematics—the only squirm who had ever distinguished himself in a scholastic way.

"swot yourself, professor vinns," snorted grain. "i'd swop all my school-books for a penny bag of popcorn. time to wonder how to spend the holiday when it comes. just now, i'm waiting to hear 'body's plan for wiping arkness's eye."

"it's this," said osbody. "half the merry men (as they have the cheek to call themselves) scarcely know one end of a chess-board from another. dominoes are just slabs of wood to them. draughts make them shiver."

"granting all that," said niblo, "i don't see what you're driving at."

"well, we all want to take robin's conceited 'crush' down a peg, i guess?"

"rather! aching for the chance."

"then it's yours for the asking. not to make a song of it, i've written something on a sheet of paper which, if you're all agreeable, i shall send to arkness to-night. listen, and i'll read it."

he smoothed out a sheet of foolscap, cleared his throat, and began:

"we, the foxenby junior games club, hereby challenge robin hood and his merry men to a three-cornered tournament, viz: games of chess, draughts, and dominoes, to be played in the holbeck house games-room on friday evening next."

"oh, great gingerbreads, that's ripping!" said niblo.

"best idea ever!" said vinns.

"humph!" grunted grain. "must be grass-green, both of you, if you fancy they'll rise to a bait like that."

osbody looked annoyed. grain's habit of throwing cold water on everything he suggested was always a thorn in the flesh of the leader of the squirms.

"see nothing to sneer about, grain," he snapped. "why shouldn't they bite?"

"they'll make paper pellets of the challenge," grain persisted. "what asses they would be to play us on our own pitch, so to speak, at games they don't stand an earthly in. fancy arkness bringing his men like lambs to the slaughter! he's too fly for that!"

"i agree," said niblo, with a sigh of disappointment. "it won't come off, 'body, old man. better make paper boats of the challenge than give robin the chance to be sarcastic about it."

"yes," said vinns. "he's confoundedly clever at writing skits."

but osbody stubbornly declined to be talked out of his venture. "stow your jaw, everybody," he said. "this challenge is going, whatever you say. i'm positive it's the only way of taking a rise out of arkness and his shrubbery hooligans."

"it'll come back like a boomerang," growled grain.

"well, if it does, only my head will suffer, for i shall sign it," said osbody. "here, younker," he broke off, collaring a first-form boy who was trying to slip past, "take this paper to robin arkness, in rooke's house. look alive, now."

five minutes later robin was reading out the challenge to a group of merry men in the "gym". its arrival quite knocked the steam out of a ding-dong glove-fight between little john and friar tuck, old rivals in pugilism. they ceased banging each other and gathered round robin with the rest.

"what a beastly lot of one-eyed badgers," exclaimed david of doncaster.

"rather!" agreed will scarlet. "licked at everything that matters, they want to draw us into chimney-corner and parish-tea games."

"no jolly fear," said little john. "chess always gives me a headache."

"same here," said the miller.

"i always end by building castles with my dominoes," said the tinker.

"draughts strikes me as a sort of girl's game," another merry man put in.

"allan a dale's the only man we have who can play all three games decently," the tanner declared.

"good idea," said dave. "set allan on playing osbody, and we'll all stand round to watch."

shy allan hastily declined the honour, whereupon robin, having waited for the hubbub to subside, gave his opinion.

"cheek in chunks, but artful—particularly artful," he said. "we don't want to play the squirms at games. we don't want to sit in the same room with them. we'd rather play snakes-and-ladders with the tinker's flamingoes at the zoo."

"we would indeed!" cried will scarlet. "send him a snorting answer, robin."

"refuse the challenge, do you mean?" queried robin.

"i should say so, thumbs down."

robin shook his head sadly. "we can't," he groaned. "if we did, they'd never afterwards cease yapping at us. oh, yes, i can see you staring at me, but what would you say, chaps, if osbody put up his dukes to me in the shrubbery and sang out 'come on'?"

"we'd tell you to go for him, robin, like old steam."

"just so. it would be a challenge, and you'd expect me to take it. if he said, 'i'll race you up the moston church-side to the steeple', daft though that would be, i'd have to climb with him. twig what i mean, boys? the merry men's reputation is at stake. we cannot refuse."

many of them decidedly differed from this opinion. why, they argued, should they give the squirms the chance of scalping them in a tournament of osbody's own choosing? but robin was not to be shaken.

"i'll put that right, chaps," he said. "give me two minutes while i answer the challenge."

he scribbled furiously for a time and then read out the following:

"we, the merry men, accept the challenge of the foxenby junior games club to play them at chess, draughts, and dominoes on friday evening next if they will agree to play us at football on the following wednesday afternoon.

"(signed) robin hood."

"good!" exclaimed david of doncaster. "that's a facer for them, robin."

"you've turned their flanks," commented will scarlet. "the mere thought of meeting us at footer will make them goggle-eyed."

"it'll wash out the games tournament, hurrah!" cried little john, intensely relieved.

"don't be too cocksure of that, fellows," said robin, gloomily. "i hope it will, but we've got to be ready for anything."

he found a messenger to carry the answer to osbody, whose face lengthened somewhat as he read it aloud to his cronies.

"there, you've let us in for it now!" cried grain, angrily. "didn't i warn you the boomerang would come back? fancy having to play 'em at football! the bare idea gives me a stitch in my side."

it was a turning of the tables which the squirms had not even remotely anticipated, and they followed grain's lead in heaping reproaches on osbody's head. but he, too, had a will of his own, combined with a gift of leadership almost equal to that of robin.

"chaps," he said, "have i ever failed you as a leader of this band? we have had some pretty rough times—when did i ever show funk?"

they were compelled to admit that he had stood by them through thick and thin.

"very well, then," said osbody. "either i'm to have the pleasure of leading you to victory once in a while, or the whole bag-o'-tricks goes overboard. football or no football afterwards, we're playing this games' tournament on friday evening."

grain's crafty eyes lit up with sudden hope. "nobody's indispensable," he said, significantly.

osbody shot a fiery glance at his rival. "let the fellows choose!" he snapped. "i'll have my way, or go."

if grain had any serious hopes of stepping into osbody's shoes at that moment, his disappointment must have been intense. fully twenty of the squirms were present, and they crowded round osbody with assurances of loyalty that did them credit.

"you're right, 'body," said "professor" vinns. "revenge is sweet, and for once we'll have it."

"so we will," said niblo. "at chess, draughts, and dominoes we'll make crawling worms of them. they shall taste the dust beneath our feet."

"just as we shall taste the mud beneath their boots when the football match comes off," sneered grain, savagely.

"rats to the old football match!" said niblo. "if necessary, we will play two goalkeepers to hold the score down. friday comes before wednesday, and thrice-armed is he who gets his blow in first."

in the few remaining days before the tournament some of the merry men tried desperately hard to rub up their knowledge of indoor games. allan a dale, bashful and slow-spoken as a rule, became almost as loud-voiced as a drill-sergeant in his efforts to teach chess and draughts to his chums.

lovers of the open-air as they were, their thoughts were continually wandering from the chequered board. robin alone made satisfactory progress. it was up to him, he believed, to set his men a good example, though all his eloquence failed to keep little john longer at the chess-board than fifteen minutes at a time.

"i shall just move the pieces anyhow and trust to luck," little john said.

"then your opponent will wipe the floor with you."

"if he does," said little john, grimly, "let him look out for himself when i meet him on the football-field, that's all."

generally speaking, it was this thought of out-door revenge which sustained the dejected merry men when they took their seats for the tournament on friday evening.

osbody had arranged the order of things most craftily. first came dominoes, as the game in which there was only a slight element of skill. it was natural that the merry men would score a few points at dominoes, though three-fourths of them were well-beaten, robin and allan being amongst the losers.

the squirms were openly exultant. even osbody had difficulty in repressing a triumphant smile.

"draughts next," announced the leader of the squirms. "any particular fancy about pairing off, arkness?"

"i'll play you," said robin. "the other fellows can sort themselves out as they like."

osbody whispered something to vinns, who casually dropped into a chair opposite allan a dale. this was a pre-arranged plan, for "professor" vinns was as weirdly clever at board-games as he was at mathematics, and all allan a dale's skill proved powerless to prevent him winning. their game lasted longest, but the result was never in doubt. allan, the hope of the merry men, was cornered and beaten.

no sum of subtraction was needed to reckon the tally in favour of the squirms. they had won every game but two drawn ones, osbody having failed to beat robin, and grain having found in will scarlet an opponent too tough to knock out.

"something like an evening's sport," commented osbody.

"most enjoyable," murmured niblo.

these happy meetings ought to become a permanent feature," said "professor" vinns, beaming over his glasses at his crestfallen opponent.

"i beg to differ," said robin. "not in an atmosphere like this, anyhow. phew! i can scarcely breathe! i vote we have all the windows open, chaps; the place is like a furnace."

some of the merry men ran at once to the window-cords, but osbody violently protested.

"windows open be hanged!" he cried. "it's freezing outside. there's a sea-breeze that cuts like a knife. we should all get our deaths of cold."

"rubbish!" retorted robin. "fresh air never harmed anyone. better to shiver than be baked alive. i feel like a bread-loaf in an oven."

"i can't help that," snapped osbody. "i hate to sit in a draught. what do you other fellows say?"

the squirms unanimously agreed with their leader. it would, they said, be like courting almost certain death from influenza or pneumonia to open the windows on such a night.

"well," said robin, "it comes to this: we want air and you want suffocation. what's the polite rule in these cases? the visiting team is given the choice. are you for ventilation, my merry men?"

"ay, ay, robin!" the merry men cried, with one voice.

"fresh-air fiends!" snorted grain.

"we shan't agree," said osbody.

"right you are," cried robin easily. "there's only one thing to do, then. we'll leave the tournament as it is, and call it a draw."

the squirms stared at one another in blank consternation. to be robbed of their sweeping victory in this freakish fashion was a misfortune not to be borne.

"tommy-rot!" exclaimed osbody. "we haven't played a single chess-game yet."

"funkpots!" sneered grain. "you're afraid to see it through."

for answer robin pulled down the upper part of a big window and his merry men followed his lead, flooding the over-heated room with sweet night air.

"there, that's better!" cried robin. "carry on with the chess."

the squirms were outmanoeuvred. they had either to abandon full and complete victory or finish the tournament in a torrent of air which swept their score-cards to the floor. so, with sinking hearts, and the sourest of faces, they turned up their coat-collars and decided to "stick it".

at chess most of the merry men went down like ninepins, some of them having difficulty in distinguishing knights from bishops.

once again the squirms swept the board. allan a dale and robin, by dint of mental gymnastics which made their heads swim, wrung draws from vinns and osbody respectively; but these partial successes only threw the general rout of the merry men into stronger relief. just as they had expected, they were decisively and ignominiously thrashed.

immediately the squirms became a mutual admiration society. hands were wrung and shoulders were slapped, and in every way the merry men were made to feel that they were very small potatoes indeed. in unutterable disgust at such exceedingly bad taste, they trooped to the door.

"here, aren't you going to give three cheers for the winners?" osbody called after them.

with eyes that blazed contemptuously robin flung round on him.

"no, we're not," he said. "this wasn't a tournament from the start. it was like a rabbit-coursing match, where they blind and starve the rabbits before they let the dogs loose."

"rubbish!" osbody scoffed. "it was man to man. we met on even terms!"

"all serene," answered robin. "hope you'll think the same when we're dry-rubbing you next wednesday!"

he hurried his merry men out of the room, and then, as a parting shot, popped his head round the door to shout—

"hot water-bottles and babies' comforters, this way! all dirty squirms with stiff necks should grease 'em with goose-fat. like cures like!"