The two lords held their peace, but they were determined to win if they could, and they did not blow the horn, as agreed on, immediately when the roe started, but sauntered about, to put off time, and suffer the trail to cool. The two hounds were brought up, and loosed at the spot; they scarcely shewed any symptoms of having discovered the scent. The king shook his head; and Hume, who loved the joke dearly, jeered the king about his wager, which his majesty only answered by speaking to one of the hounds that stood next to him. “Ah! Mooly, Mooly, if you deceive me, it is the first time; but I have another matter to think on than you this morning, Mooly.” Mooly fawned on her royal master; jumped up at the stirrup, and took his foot playfully in her mouth, while Keryl, the king’s steed, laid back his ears, and snapped at her, in a half-angry, half-playful mood. This done, Mooly turned her long nose to the wind; scented this way and that way, and then scampering carelessly over the brow of the hill, she opened in a tone so loud and so sprightly that it made all the Eildons sound in chorus to the music. Scratch joined with her elegant treble, and away they went like two wild swans, sounding over the hill.
“Trimmy! Trimmy! my poor Trimmy!” cried Gale, vexed and astonished; “Trimmy, halloo! hie, hunt the deer, Trimmy! Here, here, here!”
No; Trimmy would never look over her shoulder, but away she ran with all her might home to Eildon-Hall. “The plague be in the beast,” said Gale to himself, “if ever I saw any thing like that! There is surely something about these two hounds that is scarcely right.”
Round and round the hills they went side by side, and still the riders kept close up with them. The trail seemed to be warm, and the hounds keen, but yet no deer was to be discovered. They stretched their course to the westward, round Cauldshields Hill, back over Bothendean Moor, and again betook them to the Eildons; still no deer was to be seen! The two hounds made a rapid stretch down towards Melrose; the riders spurred in the same direction. The dogs in a moment turning short, went out between the two eastern hills, distancing all the riders, whom they left straggling up the steep after them as they could, and when these came over the height there was a fine roe-deer lying newly slain, and the two snow-white hounds panting and rolling themselves on the grass beside her. The king claimed his wager, but Hume objected, unless his majesty could prove that it was the same deer that they had started at the same place in the morning. The king had the greatest number of voices in his favour, but the earl stood to his point. “Is it true, my liege lord,” said an ancient knight to the king, “that these two beautiful hounds have never yet been unlieshed without killing their prey?”
“Never,” returned the king.
“And is it equally true,” continued the old knight, “that to this day they have never been seen kill either roe, deer, or any other creature?”
“That is a most extraordinary circumstance,” said the king; “pause until I recollect—No; I do not know that any eye hath ever yet seen them take their prey.”
“I heard it averred last night,” said the old man, “that if they are kept sight of for a whole day the deer is never seen, nor do they ever catch any thing; and that the moment they get out of sight, there the deer is found slain, nobody knows how. I took note of it, and I have seen it this day verified. Pray, is this a fact, my liege?”
“I never before thought of it, or noted it,” said the king; “but as far as my memory serves me, I confess that it has uniformly been as you say.”
“Will your majesty suffer me to examine these two hounds?” said the old man. “Methinks there is something very odd about them—Sure there was never any animal on earth had eyes or feet such as they have.”