'Something, darling—what?'
'Death, or a calamity little short of it, perhaps.'
'I do not understand you,' said Bevil, caressing her with great tenderness, and becoming very anxious on finding how faint her voice was, and how excessively she was trembling. 'Dearest Alison, the night air is chill, I am selfish and barbarous in keeping you here.'
'Don't say so, my love,' murmured the girl, as she nestled close to him, 'for something is about to happen, and heaven knows only when I may meet you again.'
'What fills you so with apprehension?'
And now, with pale and trembling lips, while reclining in Goring's arms, she told him the family legend, at which he—a man of the period—a young officer within a mile or so of his lines at Aldershot, felt inclined to laugh very heartily, but for Alison's intense dejection, and the doubts and fears incident to their mutual position.
'Dearest Alison,' said he, smiling, 'you have one bête noire assuredly—old Cadbury—don't, for heaven's sake, manufacture and adopt another.'
'Bevil, don't jest with me,' she said, imploringly.
'I do not jest with you, sweet one; but tell me all about this devilish hound—for such it must be, of course.'
It would seem that it first appeared on the night of a dreadful storm, centuries ago—a night when the wind howled and roared round Essilmont, and the Ythan, white and foaming, tore in full flood through the dreary heather glens towards the sea, and when the thunder peals seemed to rend heaven; yet amid all this elemental din the gate-ward at Essilmont heard the baying of a dog at the gate, and, opening it, a large black hound came in, and was permitted to crouch by the hall fire, and when the embers of the latter began to sink and fade away, it was remarked by those who were there that the eyes of the great shaggy hound, as it lay with its long sharp nose resting on its outstretched paws, had in them a strangely diabolical and malicious glitter as they roved from face to face.