The hollow in which the castle of Watho lay was a cleft in a plain
rather than a valley among hills, for at the top of its steep sides,
both north and south, was a table-land large and wide. It was covered
with rich grass and flowers, with here and there a wood, the outlying
colony of a great forest. These grassy plains were the finest hunting
grounds in the world. The chief of Watho's huntsmen was a fine fellow,
and when Photogen began to outgrow the training she could give him, she
handed him over to Fargu. He with a will set about teaching him all he
knew. He got him pony after pony, larger and larger as he grew, every
one less manageable than that which had preceded it, and advanced him
from pony to horse, and from horse to horse, until he was equal to
anything in that kind which the country produced. In similar fashion he
trained him to the use of bow and arrow substituting every three months
a stronger bow and longer arrows, and soon he became, even on horseback,
a wonderful archer. Every day, almost as soon as the sun was up, he went
out hunting, and would in general be out nearly the whole of the day.
But Watho had laid upon Fargu just one commandment, namely, that
Photogen should on no account, whatever the plea, be out until sun-down,
or so near it as to wake in him the desire of seeing what was going to
happen; and this commandment Fargu was anxiously careful not to break;
for although he would not have trembled had a whole herd of bulls come
down upon him, charging at full speed across the level, and not an arrow
left in his quiver, he was more than afraid of his mistress. So that, as
Photogen grew older, Fargu began to tremble, for he found it steadily
growing harder to restrain him. He did not know what fear was, and that
not because he did not know danger; for he had had a severe laceration
from the razor-like tusk of a boar--whose spine, however, he had severed
with one blow of his hunting-knife before Fargu could reach him with
defense.
When the boy was approaching his sixteenth year, Fargu ventured to beg
of Watho that she would lay her commands upon the youth himself, and
release him from responsibility for him. One might as soon hold a
tawny-maned lion as Photogen, he said. Watho called the youth, laid her
command upon him never to be out when the rim of the sun should touch
the horizon, accompanying the prohibition with hints of consequences
none the less awful that they were obscure. Photogen listened
respectfully, but knowing neither the taste of fear nor the temptation
of the night, her words were but sounds to him.