We were halfway up a long slope and among fresh trees.  Then he lifted me and set me on the curved arm of a great oak tree, some eight feet from the ground, asking me if I was safe there.  And when I laughed and answered that I was, he set his back against the 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.