CHAPTER VI

"THERE I dreamed, and I saw myself changing into a stag in dream,
and I felt in dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in
dream I arched my neck and braced my powerful limbs.

"I awoke from the dream, and I was that which I had dreamed.

"I stood a while stamping upon a rock, with my bristling head
swung high, breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the
world. For I had come marvellously from de-

crepitude to strength. I had writhed from the bonds of age and
was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for the first time
how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose sniffed
all things to my heart and separated them into knowledge.

"Long I stood there, ringing my iron hoof on stone, and learning
all things through my nose. Each breeze that came from the right
hand or the left brought me a tale. A wind carried me the tang of
wolf, and against that smell I stared and stamped. And on a wind
there came the scent of my own kind, and at that I belled. Oh,
loud and clear and sweet was the voice of the great stag. With
what ease my lovely note went lilting. With what joy I heard the
answering call. With what delight I bounded, bounded, bounded;
light as a bird's plume, powerful as a storm, untiring as the
sea.

"Here now was ease in ten-yard springings, with a swinging head,
with the rise and fall of a swallow, with the curve and flow and