“What is it?”
“I could have sworn I heard something. I’ve got long ears—like a donkey, you will say.”
Both listened intently, the woman with less eagerness, less anxiety, than the man. There was a kind of exaltation about Marian to-night. Her nerves were as firm as those of her male companion himself; and the certainty of a bloody conflict was to her, in her then frame of mind, a mere matter of detail.
“Ah! I thought I was right,” he went on, as a premonitory “woof” from one of the dogs lying around the house was followed by a general uprising and clamour on the part of the whole lot. Then, baying savagely, they started off in fall charge in the direction of the dark line of shade thrown by the willows fringing the dam, and on the opposite side to that watched by Renshaw and his companion.
“Marian, just go to the other side and look if you can see anything. You won’t, I know, but still there’s no harm in making sure.”
She obeyed. From that side of the house nothing was visible except a long stretch of sickly moonlight and the line of trees. But the dogs had disappeared within the shade of the latter and were raising a clamour that was truly infernal. They seemed to be holding something or somebody in check. Then she returned to her former post.
“There’s nothing there,” she said, “at present. Ah!”
Three shadowy figures were flitting round the angle of the outhouse block above mentioned. They gained the shade thrown by the front of it—crouched and waited.
“Here they are,” whispered Renshaw, under his breath. “I was up to that dodge. One fellow was told off to draw off the dogs, while these jokers sneaked up in the opposite direction. Look—here come the rest.”
Two more figures followed the first—then another. All were now crouching in the shadow of the outhouses. Still the yelling clamour of the dogs sounded distant on the other side, kept up with unabated fury.