What a wonderful thing is life with its contrasts! Only two friends returning home this lovely evening from a day of healthful exercise, the cheerful voices of those they had left behind scarcely out of earshot. No more than this would the casual saunterer along that unfrequented footpath through the plantations meet or see. Yet, what could be of more awful moment than the subject of their discussion! If the supernatural powers to which one of these two lays claim exist, such powers are bounded by no considerations of time or locality; are dependent on no such matters of detail as official insignia. They exist or they do not, and if the former, can neither be qualified nor limited. Can it be that these silent woods—these glittering stars looking down through the leafless boughs, are about to witness a solemn act of absolution, and that from one of these men will be lifted a terrible weight of blood-guilt—even the curse of Cain! Surely it seems that those peaceful stars reflect the light of angelic eyes, and that even the voice of God might be heard in this secluded place.
But it is Earth after all. Whatever confidence might have been imminent, an interruption befalls, a diversion is created—and by what? Only a dog.
Ranging at will, forgotten of his master, Roy’s quick ear has detected a stealthy footfall among the dry crisp leaves, and there he stands, with hair erect and fangs bared, snarling savagely at a dark, thickset form, whose efforts to pacify him only seem to augment his hostility.
“Come away, Roy, you rascal—come away, sir, d’you hear?” cried Roland. The dog obeyed, and retreated reluctantly to his master’s side, keeping up a running fire of most threatening growls. “Down, sir. And now, who are you?”
“It’s only me, sir,” answered a gruff voice.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Devine? By the way, have you been over at the Hall?”
“Well, sir,” answered the man in rather hang-dog fashion, “I’ve a bin over to see Mister Lucas about them dawgs the Kurnel was to have, and took a short cut back.”
“I see. Is that shoot to come off the day after to-morrow, do you know?”
“Well, sir, the Kurnel don’t seem to have made up his mind. But he’ll be sure to let you know. There’s lots o’ rabbits in the cliff jest above Smugglers’ Ladder, sir,” added the keeper, in a different tone, looking Roland keenly in the face. “Such lots are there, that they pitches each other over, sometimes. I see’d one wunst, one moonlight night.”
Although feeling as if suddenly shot through the heart, Roland made no sign. With a short nod, he turned away. Roy, still growling deeply, walked close at his side, as if his instinct told him that his beloved master might come to need more than all the watchfulness of the most faithful of friends in the impending peril. It was the third time of late that Stephen Devine had let fall a sinister hint.