A Prince of Cornwall | Page 7

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