CHAPTER XVII 



FLIGHT FROM THE PRINCE'S CASTLE 



'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack, and be gone. 



Comedy of Errors. 

 Alas ! poor shepherd ! 



As You Like It. 



Frosts, and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds. 



Love's Labour s Lost. 



"Time travels in divers paces with divers persons." It 

 is an immortal truth. But surely the Immortal Speaker 

 made a little mistake in his description of the man 

 with whom Time oversteps the speed limit ? Who 

 finds Time gallop the fastest ? Why, the sportsman, 

 of course, shooting against the season and the weather 

 and the Game Laws ; for, though he go as scientifically 

 as rifle can shoot, he thinks himself too soon at the end. 



Our trip was nearing its close. Winter waited on the 

 whims of vacillating autumn, and in every touch of her 

 keen breath bade us turn our backs on the wild ere it 

 was too late, and return to a world of newspapers and 

 letters, interminable books on Napoleon, and all the 

 hundred and one things that go to make the mysterious 

 whole which, for want of another name, or from habit, 

 custom, politeness, what you will, we call Civilization. 



As time travelled sport grew worse, and this because 

 the Prince's foresters only knew the country within a 



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