emen close by, a little wide on either flank,
but behind me. So we took the bird after a good chase, and then I
knew that we had in some way shaken off the Saxons, and that we
three vikings were together. It did not trouble us, for one looks
for such partings, and Ethelnoth had his own bounds. So we went on,
and found another bustard, and took it.

"Now we must go back," I said; "one must have a thought for the
king's horses."

So we turned, and then a heron rose from a boggy stream below us,
and that was a quarry not to be let go. I unhooded the falcon and
cast her off, and straightway forgot everything but the most
wonderful sight that the field and forest can give us--the dizzy
upward climbing circles of hawk and heron, who strive to gain the
highest place cloudwards, one for attack, the other for safety.

The evening sunlight flashed red from the bright under feathers of
the strong wings as the birds swung into it from the shadow of the
westward hill, and still they soared, drifting westward with the
wind over our heads. Then with a great rushing sound the heron gave
up, and fell, stone-like, from the falcon that had won to air above
him at last. At once the long wings of his enemy closed halfway,
and she swooped after him.

Then back and up, like a sword drawn at need, went the heron's
sharp beak; and the falcon saw it, and swerved and shot past her
nearly-taken prey. Again the heron began to tower up and up with a
harsh croak that seemed like a cry of mockery; then the wondrous
swing and sweep of the long, tireless wings of the passage hawk,
and the cry of another heron far off, scared by its fellow's note;
and again for us a canter over the moorland, eye and hand and knee
together wary for both hawk above and good horse below, till the
falcon bound to the heron, and both came to the ground, and there
was an end in the grey shadow of the Dartmoor tors. Ay, but King
Alfred's hawk was a good one!

"Now, where shall we seek Ethelnoth?" I said.

"No good seeking him," said Harek. "We had better make our way back
to the village."

We coupled up the greyhounds again and hooded the falcon, and rode
leisurely back over our tracks for some way. The sun set about that
time into a purple bank of mist beyond the farther hills. One does
not note how the miles go when one finds sport such as this, and
presently we began to be sure that we had ridden farther than we
had thought. We knew, as we thought, the direction fr