The poor metamorphosed steward, finding no rest for the sole of his foot, betook him again to the staircase, and crept down at his master's feet, deeming the chastisement to have been over. But he was no sooner there than the pages were after him, and by the time they had whirled him three times about, he started up a hare, and the three pages, turning themselves into colley dogs set all upon him.
With the form of every quadruped into the shape of which he was turned, he seemed to acquire its nature and antipathies, and in none was it so striking as in the hare. When the collies began to snap at him, his terror is not to be imagined; he darted round and round the hall like lightning, breaking out and in to Michael's study, to the great disarrangement of his conjuring apparatus, books, and papers; while every time that a colley sprung with open mouth at him, he uttered a desperate scream.
This was the only one of their frolics that appeared to amuse the great Master, his partiality for the sports of the chase being proverbial to this day. When he saw the old seneschal laying back his long ears, and exerting his powers of speed in such manifest terror, and the malignant collies whinking after him, and waylaying him in every strait, making him often spring aloft, he could not help laughing outright, and baiting the dogs on him. The tears stood in the old hare's eyes when he heard this, nevertheless his fright made him agile; he bolted from the halls and alleys of the castle into the extensive yard; and there was such a hunt! Michael and the friar both ran to their respective windows to see the sport, and our party at the outer gate shouted and hallooed with great energy. Many a time did the dogs get a snap at the steward, and make him scream out, while all the onlookers laughed aloud. At length, thinking he would actually be worried, he cleared the wall, and made a bold effort to gain the wood. But these were a trio of dogs from which there was no possibility of escape. Ran he fast or ran he slow, there were they after him, snatching at his hips and panting sides, and yelping so keenly all the while that the seneschal had no doubt of being torn in pieces should they fairly seize him. They turned him, and made him trace many an acute angle on the hill, while our party were running after him, throwing always sticks or stones at the steward, as he hasted by them, and baiting the dogs on him. Finding, as formerly, no other resource, he returned with main speed to the castle, and crept down at the Master's feet, who, with one touch of his divining rod, changed him into his own native forbidding form.
He started up in great wrath; and, though panting so that he could scarcely speak, swore a horrible oath, that he would no longer be kept in bondage and maltreated in that manner; and that, since it was impossible for him to escape in any other way, he would cut his own throat, and run his chance of an after life.
"Poor dastardly braggart!" said Michael; "not for the soul that inhabits that old malicious frame, dare you do such a thing. I would seize on it, and make sport of it for ages. I have you wholly in my power, and, dead or alive, it is the same thing to me. Were you to do as you say, and take away your life by a ghastly wound, I could even make one of these fiendish spirits enter into your body, re-animate it, and cause you to go about with your gaping wound, unclosed and unpurified, as when death entered thereat. Think of what an existence that would be, and then go and put your miserable threat into execution."
"Hah! There it is!" said Gourlay: "Turn me as I will, I see nothing but wretchedness. Cursed be the day that I saw you, and ten times cursed the confession I made, that has thus subjected me to your tyranny! However, use me another day as you have used me on this, and you do it at your peril, if you were the devil himself. I have warned you."
Michael only smiled contemptuously at the threat; and again asked what living creatures were in the castle, as he wanted a retinue to receive the message of his kinsmen.
"I have told you already," said Gourlay, in the same passionate and irritated mood; "and I again repeat it, that there is no mortal thing in the castle, but the old witch, and perhaps two or three hundred rats."
"Take that in the first place then," said Michael, "for your impertinence,"—at the same time laying him flat on the floor by a tremendous blow, although he only moved his hand toward the steward; "and in the next place go call out these three hundred rats you talk of, marshal them up in the court, and receive the mighty warden's people with all manner of pomp and respect, and use them according to their demerits."
The steward roared out with pain; and gnashing his teeth with rage, he arose growling, and was hasting away, when the Master asked him if he was going to accomplish what he had bidden him do.