"Dred," said Harry, "I love her better than I love myself. I will fight for her to the last, but never against her, nor hers!"
"And you will serve Tom Gordon?" said Dred.
"Never!" said Harry.
Dred stood still a moment. Through an opening among the branches the moonbeams streamed down on his wild, dark figure. Harry remarked his eye fixed before him on vacancy, the pupil swelling out in glassy fulness, with a fixed, somnambulic stare. After a moment, he spoke, in a hollow, altered voice, like that of a sleep-walker:—
"Then shall the silver cord be loosed, and the golden bowl be broken. Yes, cover up the grave—cover it up! Now, hurry! come to me, or he will take thy wife for a prey!"
"Dred, what do you mean?" said Harry. "What's the matter?" He shook him by the shoulder.
Dred rubbed his eyes, and stared on Harry.
"I must go back," he said, "to my den. 'Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests,' and in the habitation of dragons the Lord hath opened a way for his outcasts!"
He plunged into the thickets, and was gone.