Soon I saw that the rattle and noise of men and horses spoiled a
good chance or two for me, for the black game fled to cover, and
once a roe sprang from its resting in the bushes by the side of the
track and was gone before I could unhood the bird.

"Ho, Wulf!" I cried to one of the men who was wont to act as
forester when Ina hunted, "let us ride aside for a space, and then
we will see what sort of training a Welshman can give a hawk."

So we put spurs to our horses and went on until they were a mile
behind us, and then we were on a ridge of hill whence a long wooded
combe sank northward to the dense forest land at the foot of the
hills, and there we rode slowly, questing for what might give us a
fair flight. Bustard there were on these hills, and herons also,
for below me I could see the bare branches of the tree tops on
which the broad-winged birds light at nesting time, twigless and
skeleton-like. For a while we saw nothing, however, and so rode
wide of the track, across the heather, until we found the woodland
before us, and had to make our way back to the road, which passed
through it. But before we came in sight of the road, from almost
under my feet, a hare bolted from a clump of long grass, and made
for the coverts. I cast off the hawk and shouted, but we were too
near the underwood, and it seemed that the hare would win to cover
in time to save herself.

Yet in a moment the hare was back again out of the cover, and
running along its edge in the open as though she had met with
somewhat that she feared even more than the winged terror which she
had so nearly baffled. And that was strange, for it is hard to get
a hare to stir from her seat if there is a hawk overhead, so that