A Prince of Cornwall | Page 7

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