This last inscription reassured Ned as to the state of his own brain. He laughed savagely to himself, and after a few minutes’ rest, which he spent in grim contemplation of the altered churchyard, he turned to go home.
Whether he had “got his second wind,” or whether the rage he felt stimulated his powers, Ned returned home much faster than he came. Just outside the cottage gate he met Sarah Wall, wringing her hands and muttering to herself in deepest distress.
“What’s the matter with the woman?” asked Ned, in his surliest tones.
“Oh, sir! the dogs, the dogs! It warn’t my fault; it warn’t indeed! How they got out I know no more than the babe unborn!”
“Get out!” shouted Ned, with fury. “What the d——. You wretched old woman. Are they lost? Have they got away?”
“Oh, sir, don’tee speak like that; don’tee look so; it warn’t my fault. Abel should have been there to look after ’em.”
Ned kept down his rage until he got out of her what he wanted to know.
“What happened then? Tell me at once, quietly. Where are the dogs?”
“Oh, sir, they’re in there,” said the old woman, pointing with a trembling finger to the cottage. “And now if you was to flay me alive could I tell you how—”
But Ned did not stay to listen. He was up the garden path and through the porch before she could utter half a dozen words. An oath and a howl of rage burst from his lips at the sight which met his eyes. Stretched on the floor of the stone passage lay the dead bodies of the two bloodhounds, foam and blood still on their jaws, their attitude showing that they had expired in great agony. Ned hung over them for a moment, touched them; they were scarcely cold. Then he stood bolt upright with a livid face.