It was a mortal wound!
With a last howl, the huge animal relaxed his efforts, and in a few moments lay dead in the road.
Dudleigh rose to his feet. There was in his face an expression of pain and apprehension. The villagers stood aloof, staring at him with awful eyes. No word of congratulation was spoken. The silence was ominous; it was terrible. Edith was struck most of all by the expression of Dudleigh's face, and read there what she dared not think of. For a moment the old horror which had first seized upon her came upon her once more, paralyzing her limbs. She looked at him with staring eyes as she knelt, and the bloody knife dropped from her nerveless hands. But the horror passed, and once more, as before, was succeeded by vehement action. She sprang to her feet, and caught at his coat as he walked away.
He turned, with downcast eyes.
“O my God!” she exclaimed, in anguish, “you are wounded—you are bitten—and by that—” She could not finish her sentence.
Dudleigh gave her an awful look.
“You will die! you will die!” she almost screamed. “Oh, cannot something be done? Let me look at your arm. Oh, let me examine it—let me see where it is! Show me—tell me what I can do.”
Dudleigh had turned to enter the smithy as Edith had arrested him, and now, standing there in the doorway, he gently disengaged himself from her grasp. Then he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeve.
Edith had already noticed that his coat sleeve was torn, and now, as he took off his coat, she saw, with unutterable horror, his white shirt sleeves red with spots of blood. As he rolled up that sleeve she saw the marks of bruises on his arm; but it was on one place in particular that her eyes were fastened—a place where a red wound, freshly made, showed the source of the blood stains, and told at what a terrible price he had rescued her from the fierce beast. He had conquered, but not easily, for he had carried off this wound, and the wound was, as he knew, and as she knew, the bite of a mad dog!
Edith gave a low moan of anguish and despair. She took his arm in her hands. Dudleigh did not withdraw it. Even at that moment of horror it seemed sweet to him to see these signs of feeling on her part; and though he did not know what it was that she had in her mind, he waited, to feel for a moment longer the clasp of those hands.