The Keepers of the People

998But her greatest pleasure was the hunting expeditions. Every few months Prince Ralph would hand over the government to his father and Colonel Sayers, and go to hunt in the North of Varandaleel in the vast waste of heath and forest that ran far up the side of the mountains. Sometimes Mr. Cooper, who was classifying the fauna and flora of the country, would ride with them, more often only a few mutes. The life was delightful to her: the long days spent in the patient, noiseless tracking of game; the thousand strange sights and sounds of the pathless, scented woods; the gush of triumphant joy when the quarry fell to the rifle-crack; the fierce, fast chase of the wounded beast; the dim twilights, when, wrapped in bearskins, against the evening chill, they supped beside the crackling fire, and abandoned themselves to the luxurious enjoyment of their weariness, while Prince Ralph talked from a heart free of its burden, and the foresters, at their fire hard by, murmured their hunting stories; the dreamless sleep, wrapped in her bearskin, on a bed of moss or pine-branches; the exhilaration of the fresh awakening in the morning; all were delightful to her. Little by little, giving all her heart to it, she learned all hunting lore, and became a fine shot. Rarely indeed did her rifle crack in vain; more than once her nerve and coolness saved her from mangling or death, when her bullet stopped the headlong rush of a boar, or the clumsier charge of a bear.

999In this training her body hardened with her mind: she lost her frail air; at the end of a year her slender figure was as straight and pliant as the stem of a young sapling; and the grip of her little hand was hard to loose. But if she owed this to Prince Ralph, he owed no little to her. She was the humanising influence in his life, and from her companionship he gained a wider sympathy. She kept his heart light too; for in all the palace she alone laughed. As he had told Lady Lisdor, the Princes had bought laughter for the Varandals at the price of their own; and her laugh, which came freer as she grew stronger, when she played in the gardens with her maids and Alrasch, or when Colonel Sayers joked with her, came like water on the dry places of his heart.