“Where’s Fred?” cried Bald the next minute, when the boys were getting their bows and quivers.
His brothers could not tell him where Alfred was; so after a few moments pause, Ethelbald said:
“Never mind: let’s go without him. Hers too young and weak to do what we do. Let him stay behind and learn Latin with old Swythe.”
“He did go out after him,” said Bert.
“Yes, I saw him. I remember now,” cried Red.
His last words were almost smothered by his eldest brother, who raised to his lips a curling cow-horn tipped with a copper mouthpiece and strengthened with a ring at the head end. He proceeded to blow into it, but failed to produce anything more huntsman-like than a kind of bray such as might be uttered by a jackass suffering from a sore-throat.
But it was good enough to send all the dogs about the place frantic, and away the three boys went, followed by a pack of hounds, some of which would have been as ready to tackle wolf or boar as to dash after the lordly stag or the big-eyed, prong-horned, graceful roes of which there were many about the forest lands which surrounded the King’s home.
Alfred, from one of the upper windows, saw them go away in triumph and longed to join them; but he did not do so, for there was sorrow in his heart, and for the first time in his young life he had begun to think deeply about the words spoken by his brother and those uttered so sadly and reproachfully by the simple-hearted, gentle monk.