A Prince of Cornwall | Page 4

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