CHAPTER II 



STEPPING-STONES 



" They kill us for their sport." 



King Lear. 



Lying up that night in the sheltered covert, close 

 to his mother's side, listening to her soft-drawn 

 breath, the calf pondered many things. Whence 

 came the hunting beasts allied to the wolves, of 

 which the cow had spoken so fearfully ? Why did 

 they traitorously forget their kinship with all the 

 wild ? When she wakened he would ask her. She 

 slept heavily, and dawn had come. 



Spring was in all the air, though the deeper 

 solitudes still lay in thrall to the grip of the winter. 

 The birds were busy, with that peculiar solemnity 

 of purpose which belongs to nesting-time. The 

 golden crown, a sparrow of exalted plumage, crept 

 in and out the grass-spears — he was just everywhere, 

 the plaintive minstrel. And that most beautiful 

 of all small birds, that little ball of fluff we call the 



20 



