A Prince of Cornwall | Page 5

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