Mitchell's Plain, and at last into the thick poplar
woods near by, where Yan left it when it was too dark to follow. He
was only seven miles from home, and this he easily trotted in an hour.

[Illustration]

In the morning he was back to take it up, but instead of an old
track, there were now so many fresh ones, crossing and winding, that
he could not follow at all. So he prowled along haphazard, until he
found two tracks so new that he could easily trail them as before, and
he eagerly gave chase. As he sneaked along watching the tracks at his
feet instead of the woods ahead, he was startled by two big-eared,
grayish animals springing from a little glade into which he had
stumbled. They trotted to a bank fifty yards away and then turned to
gaze at him.

[Illustration]

How they did seem to _look_ with their great ears! How they spellbound
him by the soft gaze that he felt rather than saw! He knew what they
were. Had he not for weeks been holding ready, preparing and hungering
for this very sight! And yet how useless were his preparations; how
wholly all his preconcepts were swept away, and a wonder-stricken

"Oh-h-h!" went softly from his throat.

As he stood and gazed, they turned their heads away, though they still
seemed to look at him with their great ears, and trotting a few steps
to a smoother place, began to bound up and down in a sort of play.
They seemed to have forgotten him, and it was bewildering to see the
wonderful effortless way in which, by a tiny toe-touch, they would
rise six or eight feet in air. Yan stood fascinated by the strange
play of the light-limbed, gray-furred creatures. There was no haste or
alarm in their movements; he would watch them until they began to run
away--till they should take fright and begin the labored straining,
the vast athletic bounds, he had heard of. And it was only on noting
that they were rapidly fading into the distance that he realized that
_now_ they were running away, _already_ were flying for safety.

[Illustration: "Wingless Birds."]

Higher and higher they rose each time; gracefully their bodies swayed
inward as they curved along some bold ridge, or for a long space the
buff-white scutcheons that they bore behind them seemed hanging in
the air while these wingless birds were really sailing over some deep
gully.

Yan stood intensely gazing until they were out of sight, and it never
once occurred to him to shoot.

When they were gone he went to the pla