ven stride lulled
me so that I dozed a little. I roused when he stayed suddenly.

"Sit here, Oswald, for a moment, and fear nought while I rest me,"
he said in a strange voice.

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.