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Even the pleasure of witnessing the beautiful sight from the window was denied our hero; for the physician had ordered that he must be kept in perfect quiet. The chase was at last over, and the huntsmen all in, sympathizing with their lost companion. After nine days of sweating, blistering, and leeching, Jerome left his bed convalescent, but much reduced in flesh and strength.
Thus the methods employed by the Spaniards against the Indians two centuries before were once more brought into use. One hundred hounds were bought and with them came forty Cuban huntsmen, mostly mulattoes. As it proved, the very news of the coming of the hounds had the desired effect, the Maroons being apparently much more afraid of these ferocious dogs than of trained soldiers.
Then there came an old huntsman with a limehound and led the sportsmen to where there was an abundance of game. Many beasts were started and hunted to the death, as is ever the way with good huntsmen. Nothing that the limehound started could escape Siegfried. Swift was his steed as the tempest, and whether it was bear or boar he soon came up with it and slew it.
Once more Prince Zastrow rode with Ulik von Kessner and Alexis Vollmar and the attendant huntsmen up the avenue of pines leading to the gate of the Castle of Trelitz, but now accompanied by two unseen Presences which belonged at once to their own world and also to another and wider one.
It was a grand array, the sight of which thrilled the young sportsman to the heart. Full four hundred huntsmen, mounted on fresh and restive steeds, were slowly advancing, waiting eagerly for the word to start. Baptiste Warder, their chief, was in front with his telescope, surveying the game and the ground. Victor pushed in between Ian and Rollin, who rode near the centre of the impatient line.
I saw this sylvan chivalry, half huntsmen, half freebooters, trooping across the distant glades, or feasting and revelling beneath the trees; I was going on to embody in this way all the ballad scenes that had delighted me when a boy, when the distant sound of a wood-cutter's axe roused me from my day-dream. The boding apprehensions which it awakened were too soon verified.
Being mountaineers, and leading the unsettled and roving life of huntsmen, subsisting by the produce of the chase and the plaintain-tree, very little is known about them at Manilla beyond the fact of their existence, although the well-directed energies of several enthusiastic missionaries, who have as yet only found an entrance among them, are likely to civilize and ameliorate their condition somewhat, and to supply this information.
Half a dozen horses, gaily caparisoned, were neighing, snorting, and pawing the ground with hot impatience; a pack of stanch hounds, with difficulty restrained by the huntsmen, mingled their voices with the neighing of the steeds, while the slaves and relatives of the family were all busy in preparation for the day's sport.
In silence the hunter stood aside, while the happy father and mother caressed their baby boy grown tall. FROM the tall grass came the voice of a crying babe. The huntsmen who were passing nigh heard and halted. The tallest one among them hastened toward the high grass with long, cautious strides. He waded through the growth of green with just a head above it all.
Then the king opened the door of a little chamber in which she was to sleep; it was adorned with rich green tapestry, and resembled the cave in which he had found her. On the floor lay the bundle of flax which she had spun from the nettles, and under the ceiling hung the coat she had made. These things had been brought away from the cave as curiosities by one of the huntsmen.
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