A Prince of Cornwall. Charles W. Whistler
playing with the grey beast of the wood?"
"Here I am," I cried, running to him; "take me home, shepherd, for I think that I am lost."
He caught me up in haste, looking round him the while.
"Child," he said, "how came you here--and to what were you calling?"
"I was calling your dog," I answered, "but he is not friendly. Does he look for a beating? for he ran away yonder when he heard you coming."
"Ay, sorely beaten will that dog be if he comes near me just now," the man said grimly. "Never mind him, but tell me how you came here, and where you belong."
So I told him that I was Oswald, the son of Aldred, the thane of Eastdean, thinking, of course, that all men would know of us, and so I bade him take me home quickly.
"I have been hunting," I said, showing him my unsavoury prey, which by this time was frozen stiff in my belt. "Then I followed the hare this was after, and I cannot tell how far I have come."
All this while the man had me in his strong arms, and he had looked at the track of the dog in the snow, and now was walking swiftly from it, through the beech trees, looking up at their branches as if wondering at the way the great trunks shot up smooth and bare from the snow at their roots before they reached the first forking, fathoms skyward.
"I am a stranger, Oswald, the thane's son," he said. "I do not rightly know in which direction your home may lie."
I know now that he was himself as lost as I, but that he did not tell me, for my sake. It is an easy thing for a stranger to go astray in the Andredsweald. But I could not tell him more than that I knew that I had left the sea always behind me so long as I knew where it lay. So he turned southwards at once when he heard that, and went on swiftly. Then I heard the howl of his dog again, and I laughed, for the other howls that answered him were nearer.
"Listen, shepherd," I said. "Your dog is making his comrades howl for him, and the beating that is to come.
"Are you cold?"
For he had shivered suddenly, and his pace quickened. He had heard the howl of the single wolf that has found its quarry, and calls the answering pack to follow. But he did not tell me of my mistake.
"I am not cold overmuch," he answered. "Let us run and warm me."
Then he ran until we came to the top of a hill whence the last glimmer of the sea over Selsea was plain before him, and there I asked him to set me down lest I tired him.
"Nay, but you keep me warm," he said. "Tell me, are there oak trees as one goes seaward?"
"Ay, many and great ones in some places."
Then he ran down the hill, and the sway of his even stride lulled me so that I dozed a little. I roused when he stayed suddenly.
"Sit here, Oswald, for a moment, and fear nought while I rest me," he said in a strange voice.
We were halfway up a long slope and among fresh trees. Then he lifted me and set me on the curved arm of a great oak tree, some eight feet from the ground, asking me if I was safe there. And when I laughed and answered that I was, he set his back against the trunk, and drew his heavy seax, putting his staff alongside him, where he could reach it at once if it was needed. It was light enough, with the clear frosty starlight on the snow.
Then I heard the swift patter of feet over the crisp surface, and the grey beast came and halted suddenly not three yards from us, and on his haunches he sat up and howled, and I heard the answering yells in no long space of time coming whence we had come. His eyes glowed green with a strange light of their own as he stared at my friend, and for a moment I looked to see him come fawning to his master's feet.
Suddenly he gathered himself together, and sprung silently at the throat of the man who waited him, and there was a flash of the keen steel, and a sound as of the cleaving of soft wood, and the beast was in a twitching heap at the man's feet. I knew what it was at last, yet I could say nothing. The wolf was quite dead, with its head cleft.
Swiftly my friend hewed the great head from the trunk and tore one of the leather cross garterings from his leg, and so leapt at a branch which hung above him and pulled it down. Then he bound the head to its end with the thong and let it go, so that it dangled a fathom and a half above him, and then he lifted me from my place and ran as I had not thought any man could run, until he stayed at the brow of the hill for sheer want of breath.
Behind us at that moment rose the sound as of hungry dogs that fight over the food in their kennels, and my friend laughed under his breath strangely.
"That will be a wild dance beneath the tree anon," he said, as if to himself.
Then he said to me, "Are you frayed, bairn?" as he ran on again.
"No," I answered, "You can smite well, shepherd."
"Needs must, sometime," he said. "Now, little one, have you a mother waiting you at home?"
"No. Only father and old nurse."
"Nor brother or sister?"
"None at all," I said.
"An only child, and his father lonely," the man said. "Well, I will chance it while the trees last. The head will stay them awhile, maybe."
Now he went swiftly across the rolling woodlands, and again I slept in his arms, but uneasily and with a haunting fear in my dreaming that I should wake to see the wild eyes of the wolf glaring across the snow on us again. So it happens that all I know of the rest of that flight from Woden's pack has been told me by others, so that I can say little thereof.
The howls of the pack as they stayed to fall on the carcass of their fellow, after their wont, died away behind us, and before they were heard again my friend had come across a half-frozen brook, and for a furlong or more had crashed and waded through its ice and water that our trail might be lost in it. Then he lit on the path that a sounder of wild swine had made through the snow on either side of it as they crossed it, and that he followed, in hopes that the foe would leave us to chase the more accustomed quarry. From that he leapt aside presently with a wondrous leap and struck off away from it. He would leave nothing untried, though indeed by this time he had reason to think that the pack had lost us at the brook, for he heard no more of them.
So at last he came within sound of some far-off shouts of those who were seeking me, and he guessed well what those shouts meant, and turned in their direction. Had he not heard them I do not know what place of refuge, save the trees, he would have found that night, for he was then passing across the valley that winds down to our home.
So it happened that when at last he saw the red light from the door of our hall gleaming across the snow, for it had been left open that perchance I might see it, he was close to the place, and he came into the courtyard inside the stockading without meeting any one, for he came from the side on which the village is not.
There I woke as the house dogs barked, and at first it was with a cry of fear lest the wolves were on us again; but the fear passed as I saw my father come quickly into the light of the doorway, and heard his voice as he stilled the dogs and cried to ask if the boy was found.
"Ay, Thane, he is here, and safe," my friend answered, and he set me down in the midst of the court, while the dogs leapt and fawned round me.
Then I ran to the arms that were held out for me, forgetting for the moment the one who had brought me back to them, and left him standing there.
Then the man who had saved me turned after one long look at that meeting, and I think that he was going his way in silence, content with that he had done, but my father saw it and called to him:
"Friend, stay, for I have not thanked you, and I hold that there is reward due to you for what you have brought back to me."
"It was a chance meeting, Thane, and I am glad to have been of use. No need to speak of reward, for it is indeed enough to have seen the boy home safely."
"Why, then," said my father,