It was the more his in that he never would be able to show it to anyone, for he knew that strict laws protected the sport of the nobles. In the woods he would have to build a cage for it, early in the morning he would steal thither before the bird had shaken off its chill, they would go together across the open with searching looks directed at the whitish heavens, they would grow fond of each other as they let the sunlight rise and fall over their heads and the wind carry their silent thoughts along, and the falcon would never miss its red glove or the constraint of its pearl-sewn hood. He tied it again and ran down to the pond, returning shortly with a duck which he had killed with a stone. The falcon took it, and Renaud’s brain grew numb with intoxication, for that was a sign that it did not despise him, that it was willing to be his. It became his; it bent its head forward, listening, with tranquil wide-open eyes when the frosty branches cracked under his step in the stillness of morning; it hopped lightly down from its cage and stretched out toward his hand, beating its wings as for flight, but it did not fly--that was only a reminder--and therewith they hurried out to the softly glowing expanse of the moor. Their eyes glanced searchingly toward the dark-red welkin. Black lay the hills and thinning thickets, and the trees slept, their boughs heavy with silent birds. But the heavens grew brighter, flaming with gold and red and the lines of the plain turned to blue, and the owl sped close to the ground, seeking its covert, and the day birds stretched their wings and chirped softly because of the cold, and dark their flight cut through the gleaming air. But Renaud and his falcon went quickly on, for these were sparrows and thrushes, no prey fit for them. Down toward the marshes sounded already the drawling cry of the herons and wide-circling beat of their long wings, yonder was the quarry they sought. Then the falcon was cast with breast already expanded and wings prepared to beat, and Renaud saw it gilded by the sun as he stood with blinded eyes and dizzy head while the bird crouched against the deep blue, and heard how the clang of its bells mocked the shout of the herons. They whirred like wheels in their terror; now they tended to shoot down to the shore and hide their long necks and stupid frightened heads with backward-pointing tufts under the dark wooded banks, now they tried in wavering uncertainty to rise up in a spiral, thrusting in their broad wings to attain higher than the enemy could follow, and they swerved like reeds in the terror of their pale hearts.