by its sound, even to the lonely wayfarer.

Although, during that hush of the woods, the carol of the birds, the hum of insects, the breezy voice of the tree-tops, the cooing of the ringdove, the murmur of falling waters, and all the undistinguished harmonies of nature, unheard before, and drowned in that loud brattling, sound forth and fill the listener's ear, yet they disturb it not, nor seem to dissipate, but rather to augment, the influence of the silence.

Kenric had not the educated sentiments which lead the most highly civilized of men to sympathize most deeply with the beautiful sounds and sights of nature. Yet still, as is mostly the case with dwellers in the forest or on the wild mountain tops, he had a certain untutored eye to take in and note effects—an unlearned ear with which to receive pleasant sounds, and acquire a fuller pleasure from them than he could perfectly comprehend or explain to his own senses. And now, when the tumult of the chase had fallen asleep, he leaned against the gnarled and mossy trunk, with his boar-spear resting listlessly against his thigh, and a quiet, meditative expression replacing on his grave, stern features the earnest and excited gaze, with which he had watched the approach of the hunt.

The check, however, lasted not long; the clear, shrill challenge of a favorite hound soon rose from the woodlands, accompanied by loud cheers, "Taró, Taró, tantáro!" and followed by the full crash of the reassembled pack, as they rallied to their leader, and struck again on the hot and steaming scent.

Nearer and nearer came the cry, and ever and anon uprose, distant and mellow, the cadenced nourishes of the clear French horns, giving new life to the trackers of the deer, and filling the hearts of the riders with almost mad excitement. Ere long, several cushats might be seen wheeling above the tree-tops, disturbed from their procreant cradles by the progress of the fierce din below them. A moment afterward, dislodged from their feeding-grounds along the boggy margin of the Idle, a dozen woodcock flapped up from the alder-bushes near the brink, and came drifting along before the soft wind, on their feebly whistling pinions, and, fluttering over the head of the watcher, dropped into the shelter of the dingle in his rear, with its thick shade of varnished hollies. The next instant, a superb red deer, with high branching antlers, leaped with a mighty spring over and partly through the crashing branches of the thicket, and swept with long, graceful bounds across the clear savanna. A single shout, "Tayho!" announced the appearance of the quarry in the open, and awakened a responsive clangor of the horns, which, all at once, sounded their gay tantivy, while the sharp, redoubled clang of the whips, and the cries of "arriere! arriere!" which succeeded, told Kenric that the varlets and attendants of the chase were busy stopping the slow hounds, whose duty was accomplished so soon as the stag was forced into the field; and which were now to be replaced by the fleet and fiery alans, used to course and pull down the quarry by dint of downright strength and speed.

The stretch of green savanna, of which I have spoken as running along the northern margin of the Idle, below the wooded ridges of the lower hills, could not have been less than four miles in length, and was traversed by two sandy paths, unguarded by any fence or hedge-row, which intersected each other within a few hundred yards of the belt of underwood, whence the hunted deer had broken covert. At this point of intersection, known as the Four-Lane-Ends, a general term in Yorkshire for such cross-roads, stood a gigantic oak, short-boughed, but of vast diameter, with gnarled and tortuous branches sweeping down almost to the rank greensward which surrounded it, and concealing any person who stood within their circumference, as completely as if he were within an artificial pavilion.

That way, winged by terror, bounded the beautiful hart royal; for no less did his ten-tined antlers, with their huge cupped tops denote him; and, though it presented no real obstacle to his passage, when he saw the yellow road, winding like a rivulet through the deep grass, he gathered all his feet together, made four or five quick, short buck-leaps, and then, soaring into the air like a bird taking wing, swept over it, and alighted ten feet on the hither side, apparently without an effort—a miracle of mingled grace, activity, and beauty.

As he alighted, he paused a moment, turned his long, swan-like neck, and gazed backward for a few seconds with his large, lustrous, melancholy eyes, until, seeing no pursuers, nor hearing any longer the crash which had aroused him from his harbor, he tossed his antlers proudly, and sailed easily and leisurely across the gentle green.

But at this moment, Eadwulf the Red, who was stationed beneath that very oak-tree with the first relay of grayhounds, uttered a long, shrill whoop, and casting loose the leashes, slipped the two snow-white alans on the quarry. The whoop was answered immediately, and, at about half a mile's distance from the spot where the deer had issued, two princely-looking Norman nobles, clearly distinguishable as such by their richly-furred short hunting-coats, tight hose, and golden spurs of knighthood, came into sight, spurring their noble Andalusian coursers—at that period the fleetest strain in the world, which combined high blood with the capacity to endure the weight of a man-at-arms in his full panoply—to their fullest speed; and followed by a long train of attendants—some mounted, some on foot, huntsmen and verdurers, and yeomen prickers, with falconers, and running footmen, some leading alans in the leash, and some with nets and spears for the chase of the wild boar, which still roamed not unfrequent in the woody swamps that intersected the lower grounds and lined many of the river beds of Sherwood.

It was a gay and stirring scene. The meadow, late so quiet in its uniform green garniture, was now alive with fluttering plumes, and glittering with many-colored scarfs and cassocks, noble steeds of all hues, blood-bay and golden chestnut, dappled and roan, and gleamy blacks, and one, on which rode the foremost of the noble Normans, white as December's snow; and in the middle of the picture, aroused by the shouts in his rear, and aware of the presence of his fresh pursuers, the superb stag, with his neck far stretched out, and his grand antlers pressed close along his back, straining every nerve, and literally seeming to fly over the level sward; while the snow-white alans, with their fierce black eyes glowing like coals of fire, and their blood-red tongues lolling from their open jaws, breathless and mute, but stanch as vindictive fiends, hung hard upon his traces.

At first, the hunted stag laid his course upward, diagonally, aiming for the forest land on the hillside; and although, at first, he had scarce thirty yards of law, and was, moreover, so nearly matched in speed by his relentless enemies, that, for many hundred yards, he neither gained nor lost a yard's distance, still he gradually gathered way, as yards fell into furlongs, furlongs into miles, and drew ahead slowly, but surely, until it appeared almost certain that he must soon gain the shelter of the tall timber, where the keen eyes of the alans, impotent of scent, would be worthless in pursuit, and where he must again be dislodged by slow hounds, or the chase abandoned.

Just as he was within fifty yards, however, of the desired covert's edge, Sir Philip de Morville—for he it was who rode the foremost—raised his bugle to his lips, and sounded it long and shrill, in a most peculiar strain, to which a whoop responded, almost from the point for which the stag was making, and, at the same time, a second brace of alans—one a jet black, and the other a deep-brindled fawn color—darted out, and flew down the gentle slope, right at the head of the yet unwearied quarry.

Springing high into air, he instantly made a perfect demivolte, with an angry toss of his antlers, and shot,