And then a dread thing chanced. For Mistress Wayne, shrinking close into the window-niche and watching the red pathway of the fight, heard a new note cleave through the uproar. The wind was raving overhead; the cries were loud as ever; but deeper than them all was the low whine that sounded from the courtyard door. She saw no sword-play now, no forward leap or downward crash of men; her gaze was rooted trance-like on the door, and round about her played an ice-cold wind.
Up the long chamber, through the reeking press, a brown and shaggy-coated beast stepped softly—stepped till he reached the Lean Man's bier. But only Mistress Wayne had marked his passing.
She saw the Lean Man cease struggling with the jaw-cloth—saw him turn a haunted face toward the left hand of the bier, while terror glazed his eyes—saw the rough-coated hound set back his shadowy haunches for the spring, and leap, and clutch the Lean Man by the throat.
"God's pity, 'tis the Dog—'tis Barguest!" cried Mistress Wayne.
Her voice, sharp-edged with agony, struck like a sword-thrust into the fight. The Ratcliffes were sweeping all before them; but they stopped for one half moment. Barguest had carried disaster to them always; there was not one of them but dreaded the Brown Hound; and the woman's cry that he was in the room here plucked all the vigour from their sword-arms. The battle was lost and won in that half-moment's pause; for what had daunted the Red Folk had put fresh heart into the Waynes and driven them to the onset with resistless fury.
It was a carnage then. Five Ratcliffes dropped at the first shock, ten at the next onslaught. The rest fled headlong toward the great main door, and tried to open it; but Red Ratcliffe had made the bolts too sure, and they were caught in their own trap. Snarling, they turned at bay, and showed a serried line of faces, lean, vindictive, bright-eyed as the weasel's whom tradition named their ancestor. Those who fell writhed upward from the floor and tried to drive their blades home; and the Waynes, with low, hoarse cries, put each a foot on the skulls of the fallen, and fought on in this wise least the dying, weasel-like to the end, should prove twice as dangerous as those whose limbs were whole.
Janet had followed the battle as best she could. She had heard the feud-calls swell, and weaken, and grow loud again; had heard Mistress Wayne's shrill cry of Barguest. And then her lover's voice rose swift in victory above the growling hum of "Ratcliffe! A Ratcliffe!" And she knew that Wayne of Marsh had wiped his shame clean out at last.
Red Ratcliffe and two others were all who stood upright now, and they were fighting behind a bank of fallen comrades.
"Quarter!" gasped Ratcliffe, full of a fresh stratagem.
"Not again," laughed Wayne. "We courteous fools are out of mood to-night, Red Ratcliffe."