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 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.