“That sound,” exclaimed Aldarin, with a nervous start—“That sound is from the couch of death! It means, it means—”
A ruddy glow passed over his pale countenance, and, suddenly pausing, he gazed round the group in silence.
“It is the poor hound of our good Lord;” muttered Robin the Rough, advancing. “The hound, with skin black as death, which Lord Julian brought from Palestine—he is howling over the dead corse of his master. So have I heard him howl for three days past, as the castle-bell tolled the hour of high noon, beside the panels of yonder door. Come hither, brute; come hither, Saladin.”
The hound, black as night, with an eye like fire, came leaping through the throng, and crouched, whining, at the feet of the stout yeoman.
It was, in sooth, a noble hound, with full chest, slender limbs, long neck, and tapering body, marked by all that delicacy of proportion, that beauty of shape, and grace of motion, which tradition ascribes to the bloodhounds of the Eastern lands. The head was like the head of a snake, while the eye seemed almost instinct with a human soul.
“Sir Monk,” cried the Duke, in an imperious tone, “were it not better for thee to tell us at once whether the white powder in the goblet is poison? or shall we wait thy pleasure while thou dost weary thine eyes with gazing at yonder hound?”
The monk Albertine made a solemn inclination of his head, and kneeling on the marble floor in the centre of the group, he struck the edge of the goblet upon the tesselated stone with a quick and sudden motion of his hand.
The diamond-shaped stone of black marble was strewn with the white sediment deposited in the bottom of the goblet.
The hound sprang forward, and while his wild eyes flashed and blazed, his nostrils dilated, and the sable animal snuffed the atmosphere of the Red Chamber, as he leaped quickly around the group.
“He snuffs the smell of human blood!” muttered the stout yeoman.