“There was one from Garsykes in a ditch, and I had to get him out of it—by the scruff of his neck.
“Oh,” said Brant, lighting his pipe. “And which of ’em was he like to look at, if I might ask?”
“He was very like Long Murgatroyd.”
“And you maimed him for life, and so put him out o’ harm’s way?”
“The last I saw of him, he was standing like a dazed fool in the roadway—too soft for a man to hit.”
“It was like you, Master,” growled Brant, and touched his cap with chill respect as he turned for home.
Hardcastle only laughed as he rode forward. He knew Brant as he knew himself. If Stephen had seen Long Murgatroyd in the roadway, grey-faced and quavering, the shepherd would have understood.
They came by High Ghyll Wood, with the merry breeze in their faces, and the Master’s horse was thinking only of oats in the near-by stable when he halted in his stride and shied at nothing, so far as Hardcastle could tell. His head was turned toward the wood, and a shiver ran down his sturdy flanks.
Then Hardcastle drew rein, and listened. There might be another ambush waiting for him before he got to Logie. A horse had quicker hearing than a man. And now he heard a far-off crying in the wood—the yelping cry of a beast in pain—and thought a fox had got into one of the foresters’ many traps.
As he listened, he knew it was no fox in trouble, but a dog; and he had a soft heart for all that breed. Riding forward till he came to the gate near ahead, he tethered his horse to the trunk of a gnarled thorn-bush, and plunged into the wood.