VII -- THE HUNT

AT the head of the cavalcade rode Turka, on a hog-backed roan. On his
head he wore a shaggy cap, while, with a magnificent horn slung across
his shoulders and a knife at his belt, he looked so cruel and inexorable
that one would have thought he was going to engage in bloody strife with
his fellow men rather than to hunt a small animal. Around the hind legs
of his horse the hounds gambolled like a cluster of checkered, restless
balls. If one of them wished to stop, it was only with the greatest
difficulty that it could do so, since not only had its leash-fellow
also to be induced to halt, but at once one of the huntsmen would wheel
round, crack his whip, and shout to the delinquent,

"Back to the pack, there!"

Arrived at a gate, Papa told us and the huntsmen to continue our way
along the road, and then rode off across a cornfield. The harvest was at
its height. On the further side of a large, shining, yellow stretch of
cornland lay a high purple belt of forest which always figured in my
eyes as a distant, mysterious region behind which either the world ended
or an uninhabited waste began. This expanse of corn-land was dotted with
swathes and reapers, while along the lanes where the sickle had passed
could be seen the backs of women as they stooped among the tall, thick
grain or lifted armfuls of corn and rested them against the shocks. In
one corner a woman was bending over a cradle, and the whole stubble was
studded with sheaves and cornflowers. In another direction shirt-sleeved
men were standing on waggons, shaking the soil from the stalks of