Far and fast they rode, happily knowing the country well; now through the darkness of night, now through the glimmering daybreak.

Tall walls of fir-crowned rocks passed by their eyes, all fused and dim; gray piles of monastic buildings, with the dull chimes tolling the hour, flashed on their sight to be lost in a moment; corn-lands yellowing for the sickle, fields with the sheaves set-up, orchards ruddy with fruit, and black barn-roofs lost in leafy nests; villages lying among their hills like German toys caught in the hollow of a guarding hand; masses of forests stretching wide, somber and silent and dark as a tomb; the shine of water's silvery line where it flowed in a rocky channel--they passed them all in the soft gray of the waning night, in the white veil of the fragrant mists, in the stillness of sleep and of peace.

Passed them, racing for more than life, flying with the speed of the wind.
"I failed him to-day through my foes and his," Forest King thought, as he laid his length out in his mighty stride.

"But I love him well; I will save him to-night." And save him the brave brute did.

The grass was so sweet and so short, he longed to stop for a mouthful; the brooks looked so clear, he longed to pause for a drink; renewed force and reviving youth filled his loyal veins with their fire; he could have thrown himself down on that mossy turf, and had a roll in its thyme and its lichens for sheer joy that his strength had come back.