"You hog! Why aren't you fit to stand on your legs and fight me?" cried Griff.
He halted awhile, his hands going nervously to and fro above the body.
"No, I can't do it," he muttered dully, and went to that other patch of black.
In a trice his sympathies were awake, though they had seemed stone dead a moment ago. He knelt beside the quivering beast, and his tears dropped hot on the sweating coat.
"They needn't have mixed you up with our quarrels," he said softly.
He felt the broken limbs, and saw that there was only one thing to be done.
But how to do it? He looked at the crowbar lying in the snow at his feet; that was useless. Then he bethought him of the cottage, and ran hot-foot to see if Strangeways had left a gun about. He crept through the broken panels again, felt round the room till his hands fell on a tinder-box, and lit a rushlight that stood on the chimney-piece. A cumbersome muzzle-loader lay in one corner—the same corner in which Mother Strangeways' bed had stood that night when she called him in out of the storm. He took up the gun, found it loaded and primed, and went back to the highroad.
"There will be a row soon, old lady. I'd better fasten you up," he said quietly, as he hitched Lassie's reins to the gate-post.
He put the gun-muzzle close to the ear of the horse lying on the ground, and pulled the trigger.