As soon as the calf, which was so busy with the dog that it did not perceive Pablo, came sufficiently near to him, Pablo threw his rope, and caught the loop round the animal's neck. The calf set off galloping toward Humphrey, and dragging Pablo after him, for the latter was not strong enough to hold it.
Humphrey went to his assistance, and then Edward; and the calf was thrown down by Smoker, who seized it by the neck, and it was tied and put on the cart in a few minutes.
"Well done, Pablo! you are a clever fellow," said Edward, "and this calf shall be yours."
"It is a cow calf," said Humphrey, "which I am glad of. Pablo, you did that well, and, as Edward says, the calf belongs to you."
Pablo look pleased, but said nothing.
The meat and hide were put into the cart, with some of the offal which
Alice had asked for the dogs, and they set off on their return home.
Humphrey was very anxious to go to Lymington, and was not sorry that he had some meat to take with him: he determined to get off the next morning, and Edward proposed that he should take Pablo with him, that he might know the way there in case of any emergency, for they both felt that Pablo could be trusted. Edward said he would remain at home with his sisters, and see if he could be of any use to Alice; if not, there would be work in the garden. Humphrey and Pablo went away after breakfast, with Billy, and the meat and skin of the heifer in the cart. Humphrey had also a large basket of eggs and three dozen of chickens from Alice to be disposed of, and a list as long as the tail of a kite, of articles which she and Edith required; fortunately there was nothing very expensive on the list, long as it was—but women in those days required needles, pins, buttons, tapes, thread, worsted, and a hundred other little necessaries, as they do now. As soon as they were gone, Edward, who was still castle-building, instead of offering his services to Alice, brought out his father's sword and commenced cleaning it. When he had polished it up to his satisfaction, he felt less inclined than ever to do any thing; so after dinner he took his gun and walked out into the forest that he might indulge in his reveries. He walked on, quite unconscious of the direction in which he was going, and more than once finding his hat knocked off by the branch of a tree which he had not perceived—for the best of all possible reasons, because his eyes were cast on the ground—when his ears were saluted with the neighing of a horse. He looked up and perceived that he was near to a herd of forest ponies, the first that he had seen since he had lived in the forest.
This roused him, and he looked about him. "Where can I have been wandering to?" thought Edward; "I never fell in with any of the forest ponies before; I must, therefore, have walked in a direction quite contrary to what I usually do. I do not know where I am—the scenery is new to me. What a fool I am! It's lucky that nobody except Humphrey digs pitfalls, or I should probably have been in one by this time; and I've brought out my gun and left the dog at home. Well, I suppose I can find my way back." Edward then surveyed the whole herd of ponies, which were at no great distance from him. There was a fine horse or two among them, which appeared to be the leaders of the herd. They allowed Edward to approach to within two hundred yards, and then, with manes and tails streaming in the air, they darted off with the rapidity of the wind.
"Now I'll puzzle Humphrey when I go back," thought Edward. "He says that Billy is getting old, and that he wishes he could get another pony. I will tell him what a plenty there are, and propose that he should invent some way of catching one. That will be a poser for him; yet I'm sure that he will try, for he is very ingenious. And now, which way am I to turn to find my way home? I think it ought to be to the north; but which is north? for there is no sun out, and now I perceive it looks very like rain. I wonder how long I have been walking! I am sure I don't know." Edward then hurried in a direction which he considered might lead him homeward, and walked fast; but he once more fell into his habit of castle-building, and was talking to himself: "The king proclaimed in Scotland! he will come over of course: I will join his army, and then—" Thus he went on, again absorbed in the news which he had gained from Oswald, till on a sudden he again recollected himself, and perceived that he had lost sight of the copse of trees on a high hill, to which he had been directing his steps. Where was it? He turned round and round, and at last found out that he had been walking away from it. "I must dream no more," thought he, "or if I do indulge in any more daydreams, I certainly shall neither sleep nor dream to-night. It is getting dark already, and here I am lost in the forest, and all through my own foolishness. If the stars do not shine, I shall not know how to direct my steps; indeed, if they do, I don't know whether I have walked south or north, and I am in a pretty pickle; not that I care for being out in the forest on a night like this, but my sisters and Humphrey will be alarmed at my absence. The best thing that I can do, is to decide upon taking some straight line, and continue in it: I must then get out the forest at last, even if I walk right across it. That will be better than going backward and forward, or round and round, as I shall otherwise do, just like a puppy running alter its own tail. So now shine out, stars!" Edward waited until he could make out Charles's Wain, which he well knew, and then the Polar Star. As soon as he was certain of that, he resolved to travel by it due north, and he did so, sometimes walking fast, and at others keeping up a steady trot for a half a mile without stopping. As he was proceeding on his travels, he observed, under some trees ahead of him, a spark of fire emitted; he thought it was a glow-worm at first, but it was more like the striking of a flint against steel; and as he saw it a second time, he stopped that he might ascertain what it might be, before he advanced farther.