A Prince of Cornwall. Charles W. Whistler
up the hill to the north of the village by the track which the timber sleds make, climbing until I was on the crest, and there I began to wander as the tracks of rabbit and squirrel led me on. Sometimes I was set aside from the path by deep drifts that had gathered in its hollows with the wind of yesterday, and so I left it altogether in time. Overhead the sky was bright and clear as the low sun of the month after Yule, the wolf month, can make it. I wandered on for an hour or two without meeting with anything at which to loose an arrow, and my ardour began to cool somewhat, so that I thought of turning homewards. But then, what was to me a wondrous quarry crossed my way as I stood for a moment on the edge of a wide aisle of beech trees looking down it, and wondering if I would not go even to its end and so return. Then at once the wild longing for the chase woke again in me, and I forgot cold and time and place and aught else in it.
Across the glade came slowly and lightly over the snow a great red hare, looking against the white background bigger than any I had ever set eyes on before. It paid no heed at all to me, even when I raised my bow to set an arrow on the string with fingers which trembled with eagerness and haste. Now and again it stopped and seemed to listen for somewhat, and then loped on again and stopped, seeming hardly to know which way it wished to go. Now it came toward me, and then across, and yet again went from me, and all as if I were not there.
It was thirty paces from me when I shot, and I was a fair marksman, for a boy, at fifty paces. However, the arrow skimmed just over its back, and it crouched for a second as it heard the whistle of the feathers, and then leapt aside and on again in the same way. But now it crossed the glade and passed behind some trees before I was ready with a second arrow, and I ran forward to recover the first, which was in the snow where it struck, hoping thence to see the hare again.
When I turned with the arrow in my hand I saw what made the hare pay no heed to me. There was a more terrible enemy than even man on its track. Sniffing at my footprints where they had just crossed those of the hare was a stoat, long and lithe and cruel. I knew it would not leave its quarry until it had it fast by the throat, and the hare knew it also by some instinct that is not to be fathomed, for I suppose that no hare, save by the merest chance, ever escaped that pursuer. The creature seemed puzzled by my footprint, and sat up, turning its sharp eyes right and left until it spied me; but when it did so it was not feared of me, but took up the trail of the hare again. And by that time I was ready, and my hand was steady, and the shaft sped and smote it fairly, and the hare's one chance had come to it. I sprang forward with the whoop of the Saxon hunter, and took up and admired my prey, not heeding its scent at all. It was in good condition, and I would get Stuf, the house-carle, who was a sworn ally of mine, to make me a pouch of it, I thought.
I mind that this was the third wild thing that I had slain. One of the others was a squirrel who stayed motionless on a bough to stare at me, in summer time, and the second was a rabbit which Stuf had shown me in its seat. This was quite a different business, and I was proud of my skill with some little reason. I should have some real wild hunting to talk of over the fire tonight.
Then I must follow up the hare, of course, and I thrust the long body of the stoat through my girdle, so that its head hung one way and its tail the other, and took up the trail of the hare where my prey had left it. Now, I cannot tell how the mazed creature learned that its worst foe was no longer after it, but so it must have been, else it had circled slowly in lessening rings until the stoat had it, and presently it would have begun to scream dolefully. But I only saw it once again, and then it seemed to be listening at longer spaces. Yet it took me a long way before it suddenly fled altogether, as its footmarks told me. A forest-bred lad learns those signs soon enough, if he is about with the woodmen in snow time.
Then I turned to make my way home, following my own track for a little way. That was crooked, and I went to take a straighter path, and after that I was fairly lost.
Yet I held on, hoping every minute to come into some known glade or sight, some familiar landmark, before the sun set. But I found nought but new trees, and new views over unknown white country all round me as I turned my steps hither and thither as one mark after another drew me. Then the sun set and the short day was over, and the grey twilight of snow weather came after the passing of the warm red glow from the west, shadowless and still.
That was about the time when I was missed at home, for my father came back from Chichester town, and straightway asked for me. And when I came not for calling, nor yet for the short notes of the horn which my father had always used to bring me to him, one ran here and another there, seeking me in wonted places about the village, until one minded that he had seen a boy, who must have been myself, go up the hill track forestwards.
Then was fear enough for me, seeing that from our village more than one child has wandered forth thus and been seen no more, and I was the only son of the long-widowed thane, and the last of the ancient line that went back to Ella, and beyond him even to Woden. So in half an hour there was not a man left in the village, and all the woods and hillsides rang with their calls to me, while in the hall itself bided only the old nurse, who wept and wailed by the hearth, and my father, whose tall form came and went across the doorway, restless; for he waited here lest he should miss my coming homeward. Up the steep street of the village the wives stood in the doorways silent, and forgetting their ailments for once in listening for the cries that should tell that I was found. If they spoke at all, they said that I should not be seen again, for the cold had driven the wolves close to the villages.
But I was by this time far beyond the reach of friendly voices, on the edge of the great hill that falls sheer down through many a score feet of hanging woods and thicket to the Lavington valley far below, and there at last I knew for certain that I was lost utterly, for this place or its like I had never seen before. Then I stayed my feet, bewildered, for the sun was gone, and I had nothing to tell me in which direction I was heading, for at that time the stars told me nought, though there were enough out now to direct any man who was used to the night. When I stood still I found that I was growing deadly cold, and the weariness that I had so far staved off began to creep over me, so that I longed to sleep.
And I suppose that I should have done so, and thereby met my death shortly, but for a thing that roused me in an instant, and set the warm blood coursing through me again.
There came a rustling in the undergrowth of the hillside below me, and that was the most homely sound that I had heard since the wild geese flew over me seaward with swish and whistle of broad wings and call that I knew well. The silence of the great brown owls that circled swiftly over me now and then was uncanny.
The rustling drew nearer, and then out into the open place under the tall bare tree trunks where I stood trotted a grey beast that was surely a shepherd's dog, for he stayed and looked back and whined a little as if his master must be waited for. I thought that I could hear the cracking of more branches once farther down the hill.
Then I called to the dog, knowing that he and the shepherd would not be far apart, and at the call the dog turned quickly toward me and leaped back a yard, cowering a little with drooping tail. So I called him again, and more loudly.
"Hither, lad! Hither, good dog!"
But the beast backed yet more from me, and I saw the dull gleam of yellow teeth and heard him snarl as he did so, and then he growled fiercely, so that I thought him sorely ill-tempered. But I had no fear of dogs, and I called him again cheerily, and at that he sank on his haunches and set back his head and howled and yelled as I had never heard any dog give tongue before. And presently from a long way off I heard the like howls, as if all the dogs of some village answered him, and I thought their tongue was strange also.
Then came the shout of a man, even as I expected, and there was the noise of one who tears his way through briers and brambles in haste; but at that shout the dog turned and fled like a grey shadow into the farther thickets, and was gone.
"Who calls?" one said loudly, and from the hillside climbed hastily into the open a tall man, bearded and strong, and with a pleasant-looking, anxious face. He was dressed in leather like our shepherds, and like them carried but quarterstaff and seax for weapons. I suppose that I was in some shadow, for at first he did not see me.
"Surely I heard a child's voice," he said out loud--"or was it some pixy