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It may seem strange that a boy who was so lazy the day before, as to wish that hares ran about ready roasted, should work so hard this day at so severe a job as making a raft. But it was natural enough.
Reading, mending, sleeping, with occasional excursions into the bush, with the dogs, in search of coati, hares, and rabbits, or to encounter a rattlesnake, and now and then a visit to the Presidio, filled up our spare time after hide-curing was over for the day. Another amusement, which we sometimes indulged in, was "burning the water" for craw-fish.
"To horse," cried Xaintrailles, and, leaving thirty men to hold the bridge, the whole of our company, with spears in rest, drove down on these hare-hunters of Burgundy. Two hundred picked men in all, fully armed, were we, and we scattered the foremost riders as they had scattered the hares.
Thereafter from the earliest peep of daylight until the men quit work at night they chased rabbits. The quest was hopeless, but they kept obstinately at it, wallowing with contained excitement over a hundred paces of snow before they would get near enough to scare their quarry to another jump. It used to amuse the hares. All day long the mellow bell-tones echoed over the knoll.
They secured him, however, and carried him home, when they fed him on raw flesh, hares, and birds, till they found the charge too onerous, and gave him up to the public charity of the village till he should be recognised by his parents. This actually came to pass.
With a shade of luck, I'd have had quite a decent bag; but you know how some days things just miss the bag you can't exactly tell why so it was this afternoon; there should have been two hares, and two quail, and two birds that seemed very like pheasants. One fell in impenetrable thorns, and we could not get nearer than about ten yards, and I missed another sitting.
"Well, I know," cried the count, shrugging his shoulders. "You ran away because you are cowards! Hush! No excuses now! We shall talk about it early to-morrow morning. Stay here in the guardroom. I myself will go up and see what folly has frightened you hares. Lehndorf and Brandt, both of you stay here and await my return."
There is no throng of folk, no lighted ways, nor much amusement by their way of it; but to the countryman the winter is the time the long dark nights for ceilidhing, the days after the rabbits and hares, and the cosiness about a steading, with the beasts at their straw and turnips, and the lassies to be coming home with, and the old stories that will make the hair rise on a man's head.
By his daughter's desire the farmer now procured a large number of hares, and a barrel of white wine, which expenses completely emptied his slender stocking, and on the day of the Ogre's visit, she made a delicious and savoury stew with the hares in the biggest pickling tub, and the wine-barrel was set on a bench near the table.
"Talking, Sir," said Ellen, doubtfully. "Talking! this whole evening? Alice must have improved. What have you been talking about?" "Hares and dogs and about Mr. Cowper and some other things." "Private affairs, eh?" said he, with again the look Ellen had seen before. "Yes, Sir," said Ellen, nodding and laughing. "And how came you upon Mr. Cowper?" "Sir?"
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