Overhead the sky was bright and clear as the low sun of the month after Yule, the wolf month, can make it.

I wandered on for an hour or two without meeting with anything at which to loose an arrow, and my ardour began to cool somewhat, so that I thought of turning homewards.

But then, what was to me a wondrous quarry crossed my way as I stood for a moment on the edge of a wide aisle of beech trees looking down it, and wondering if I would not go even to its end and so return.

Then at once the wild longing for the chase woke again in me, and I forgot cold and time and place and aught else in it.
Across the glade came slowly and lightly over the snow a great red hare, looking against the white background bigger than any I had ever set eyes on before.

It paid no heed at all to me, even when I raised my bow to set an arrow on the string with fingers which trembled with eagerness and haste.