He narrowed his lids. "It is a tradition," he replied; "meanwhile, the
thickets broaden."

Whereupon I begged him to explain how it chanced that among that
festive and animated company I had read of, he alone had resisted the
wicked godmother's spell.

He smiled distantly, and bowed me into the garden.

"That is a simple thing," he said.

Yet for the life of me I could not but doubt all he told me. He who
could pass spring on to spring, summer on to summer, in the company of
beasts so sly and silent, so alert and fleet as these hounds of his,
could not be quite the amiable prince he feigned to be. I began to
wish myself in homelier places.

It seems that on the morning of the fatal spindle, he had gone
coursing, with this Safte and Sallow and his horse named "Twilight,"
and after wearying and heating himself at the sport, a little after
noon, leaving his attendants, had set out to return to the palace
alone. But allured by the cool seclusion of a "lattice-arbour" in his
path, he had gone in, and then and there, "Twilight" beneath the
willows, his hounds at his feet, had fallen asleep.

Undisturbed, dreamless, "the unseemly hours sped light of foot." He
awoke again, between sunset and dark; the owl astir; "the silver gnats
yet netting the shadows," and so returned to the palace.