The stretch of green savanna, of which I have spoken as running along the northern margin of the Idle, below the wooded ridges of the lower hills, could not have been less than four miles in length, and was traversed by two sandy paths, unguarded by any fence or hedge-row, which intersected each other within a few hundred yards of the belt of underwood, whence the hunted deer had broken covert. At this point of intersection, known as the Four-Lane-Ends, a general term in Yorkshire for such cross-roads, stood a gigantic oak, short-boughed, but of vast diameter, with gnarled and tortuous branches sweeping down almost to the rank greensward which surrounded it, and concealing any person who stood within their circumference, as completely as if he were within an artificial pavilion. That way, winged by terror, bounded the beautiful hart royal; for no less did his ten-tined antlers, with their huge cupped tops denote him; and, though it presented no real obstacle to his passage, when he saw the yellow road, winding like a rivulet through the deep grass, he gathered all his feet together, made four or five quick, short buck-leaps, and then, soaring into the air like a bird taking wing, swept over it, and alighted ten feet on the hither side, apparently without an effort--a miracle of mingled grace, activity, and beauty. As he alighted, he paused a moment, turned his long, swan-like neck, and gazed backward for a few seconds with his large, lustrous, melancholy eyes, until, seeing no pursuers, nor hearing any longer the crash which had aroused him from his harbor, he tossed his antlers proudly, and sailed easily and leisurely across the gentle green. But at this moment, Eadwulf the Red, who was stationed beneath that very oak-tree with the first relay of grayhounds, uttered a long, shrill whoop, and casting loose the leashes, slipped the two snow-white alans on the quarry. The whoop was answered immediately, and, at about half a mile's distance from the spot where the deer had issued, two princely-looking Norman nobles, clearly distinguishable as such by their richly-furred short hunting-coats, tight hose, and golden spurs of knighthood, came into sight, spurring their noble Andalusian coursers--at that period the fleetest strain in the world, which combined high blood with the capacity to endure the weight of a man-at-arms in his full panoply--to their fullest speed; and followed by a long train of attendants--some mounted, some on foot, huntsmen and verdurers, and yeomen prickers, with falconers, and running footmen, some leading alans in the leash, and some with nets and spears for the chase of the wild boar, which still roamed not unfrequent in the woody swamps that intersected the lower grounds and lined many of the river beds of Sherwood.