e a scimitar dyed with blood. And in a last
desperate effort the hart swerved round a narrow footway by the river,
and disappeared.

The knights followed shouting with their baying dogs, and the next
instant were struck mute with astonishment. For the narrow wooded path
by the water suddenly swung open into a towering semi-circle of
dazzling cliffs, uprising like the loftiest castle upon earth: such
castles as heaven builds of gigantic clouds, to scatter their solid
piles with a wind again. But only the hurricanes of the first day or
the last could bring this mighty pile to dissolution. The forefront of
the vast theater was a perfect sward, lying above the water like a
green half-moon; beyond and around it small hills and dells rose and
fell in waves until they reached the brink of the great cliffs. At the
further point of the semi-circle the narrow way by the river began
again, and steep woods came down to the water cutting off the north.

And somewhere hidden in the hemisphere of little hills the hart was
hidden, without a path of escape.

The men sprang from their horses, and followed the barking dogs across
the sward. At the end of it they turned up a neck of grass that coiled
about a hollow like the rim of a cup. It led to a little plateau ringed
with bushes, and smelling sweet of thyme. At first it seemed as though
there were no other ingress; but the dogs nosed on and pointed to an
opening through the thick growth on the left, and disappeared with
hoarse wild barks and yelps; and their masters made to follow.

But at the same instant they heard a voice come from the bushes, a
voice well known to them; but now it was exhausted of its power, though
not of its anger.

"This quarry and this place," it cried, "are sacred to the Proud
Rosalind and in her name I warn you, trespassers, that you proceed at
your peril!"

At this the seven knights burst into laughter, and one cried, "Why,
then, it seems we have brought the lady to bay with the hart--a double
quarry, friends. Come, for the dogs are full of music now, and we must
see the kill."

As they moved forward an arrow sped far above their heads.

Then a second man cried, "We could shoot into the dark more surely than
this clumsy marksman out of it. Let us shoot among the trees and give
him his deserts. And after that let nothing hold us from the dogs, for
their voices turn the blood in me to fire."

So each man plucked an arrow from his quiver.

And as he