Brian Fitz-Count: A Story of Wallingford Castle and Dorchester Abbey

by A. D. Crake

The two embraced as those who might never meet again—but as those who part in haste—and Ulric plunged into the thicket and disappeared.

Osric lay hidden in the branches of the hollow tree. There was a comfortable seat about ten feet from the ground, the feet hidden in the hollow of the oak, the head and shoulders by the thick foliage. He did not notice that Ulric had divested himself of an upper garment he wore, and left it accidentally or otherwise on the ground. All was now still. The sound of the boy's passage through the thick bushes had ceased. The scream of the jay, the tap of the woodpecker, the whirr of an occasional flight of birds alone broke the silence of the forest day.

Then came a change. The crackling of dry leaves, the low whisper of hunters, and that sound—that bell-like sound—the bay of the hound, like a staunch murderer, steady to his purpose, pursuing his prey relentlessly, unerringly, guided by that marvellous instinct of scent, which to the pursued seemed even diabolical.

At last they broke through the bushes and passed beneath the tree—seven mounted pursuers.

"See, here is the trail; it is as plain as it can be," cried Malebouche; for it was he, summoned in the emergency from Shirburne, the Baron not having yet returned—six men in company.

But the dog hesitated. They had given him a piece of Osric's raiment to smell before starting, and he pointed at the tree.

Luckily the men did not see it; for they saw on the ground the tunic Ulric had thrown off to run, with the unselfish intention that that should take place which now happened, confident he could throw off the hound.

The men thrust it to the dog's nose, thinking it Osric's,—they knew not there were two—and old Pluto growled, and took the new scent with far keener avidity than before, for now he was bidden to chase one he might tear. Before it was a friend, the scent of whose raiment he knew full well. They were off again.

All was silence once more around the hollow tree for a brief space, and Osric was just about to depart and try to limp to Lollingdune, when steps were heard again in the distance, along the brook, where the path from the outlaws' cave lay.