n the woods while the old nurse, whose care I
was far beyond, slept after her midday meal before the fire. So,
over my warm woollen clothing I had donned the deerskin short cloak
that was made like my father's own hunting gear, and I had taken my
bow and arrows, and the little seax {i} that a thane's son may
always wear, and had crept away from the warm hall without a soul
seeing me. I had thought myself lucky in this, but by this time I
began to change my mind in all truth. Well it was for me that there
was no wind, so that I was spared the worst of the cold.

I went up the hill to the north of the village by the track which
the timber sleds make, climbing until I was on the crest, and there
I began to wander as the tracks of rabbit and squirrel led me on.
Sometimes I was set aside from the path by deep drifts that had
gathered in its hollows with the wind of yesterday, and so I left
it altogether in time. Overhead the sky was bright and clear as the
low sun of the month after Yule, the wolf month, can make it. I
wandered on for an hour or two without meeting with anything at
which to loose an arrow, and my ardour began to cool somewhat, so
that I thought of turning homewards. But then, what was to me a
wondrous quarry crossed my way as I stood for a moment on the edge
of a wide aisle of beech trees looking down it, and wondering if I
would not go even to its end and so return. Then at once the wild
longing for the chase woke again in me, and I forgot cold and time
and place and aught else in it.

Across the glade came slowly and lightly over the snow a great red
hare, looking against the white background bigger than any I had
ever set eyes on before. It paid no heed at all to me, even when I
raised my bow to set an arrow on the string with fingers which
trembled with eagerness and haste. Now and again it stopped and
seemed to listen for somewhat, and then loped on again and stopped,
seeming hardly to know which way it wished to go. Now it came
toward me, and then across, and yet again went from me, and all as
if I were not there.

It was thirty paces from me when I shot, and I was a fair marksman,
for a boy, at fifty paces. However, the arrow skimmed just over its
back, and it crouched for a second as it heard the whistle of the
feathers, and then leapt aside and on again in the same way. But
now it crossed the glade and passed behind some trees before I was
ready with a second arrow, and I ran forward to recover