“Halloa! Hi! Wait a moment there, will you?” he shouted.
The figure stopped and turned its head, then, after what seemed a moment’s hesitation, brought back the dog, which was running toward the belated youth, and suddenly disappeared.
The wanderer pulled up and stared about the glade with an astonishment which immediately gave place to wrath.
“Confound his impudence!” he exclaimed, fiercely. “I’ll swear he saw me! What on earth did he mean by going off like that? Did the fool think I was a ghost? I’ll show him I’m a ghost that carries a big stick if I come up with him. Confound him, where——” Then, as a sudden thought struck him, he set off running down the glade, barking like a dog.
No live, real dog could withstand such an invitation. The dog ahead set up an angry echo, through which the youth could hear the man’s angry attempt to silence the animal, and guided by the two voices, the wanderer struck into a footpath, and running at a good pace, came suddenly into a small clearing, in which stood a small wooden hut, before the door of which man and dog were standing as if on guard.
For a moment the two men stood and regarded each other in silence, the youth hot and angry, the man calm and grim.
Each, in his way, was a fine specimen of his class; the man, with his weather-beaten face and his thick-set limbs, clad in woodman’s garb; the youth, with his frankly handsome countenance and patrician air.
“What the deuce do you mean by leaving a man in the lurch like this?” demanded the young man, angrily. “Did you take me for a ghost?”
The woodman, half leaning on his long-handled axe, regarded him grimly.
“No. I don’t come at every man’s beck and call, young sir. What’s your will with me?”