"Who calls?" one said loudly, and from the hillside climbed hastily into the open a tall man, bearded and strong, and with a pleasant-looking, anxious face. He was dressed in leather like our shepherds, and like them carried but quarterstaff and seax for weapons. I suppose that I was in some shadow, for at first he did not see me.
"Surely I heard a child's voice," he said out loud--"or was it some pixy playing with the grey beast of the wood?"
"Here I am," I cried, running to him; "take me home, shepherd, for I think that I am lost."
He caught me up in haste, looking round him the while.
"Child," he said, "how came you here--and to what were you calling?"
"I was calling your dog," I answered, "but he is not friendly. Does he look for a beating? for he ran away yonder when he heard you coming."
"Ay, sorely beaten will that dog be if he comes near me just now," the man said grimly. "Never mind him, but tell me how you came here, and where you belong."
So I told him that I was Oswald, the son of Aldred, the thane of Eastdean, thinking, of course, that all men would know of us, and so I bade him take me home quickly.
"I have been hunting," I said, showing him my unsavoury prey, which by this time was frozen stiff in my belt. "Then I followed the hare this was after, and I cannot tell how far I have come."
All this while the man had me in his strong arms, and he had looked at the track of the dog in the snow, and now was walking swiftly from it, through the beech trees, looking up at their branches as if wondering at the way the great trunks shot up smooth and bare from the snow at their roots before they reached the first forking, fathoms skyward.