She walked round and round in this dreary spot, while the dusk grew darker, and the frost fell whiter on her foot-prints; and, when fatigue began to demand rest, she chose a seat on the gnarled root of a giant willow, whose branches swept the ground on every side, or dipped into the mere at her feet.
She became completely absorbed in her thoughts, but presently a distant pattering, like rain upon the dry foliage, recalled her, with a disagreeable start.
She opened the branches of her yellow-leaf screen and looked about.
Nearer came the pattering steps, slow and soft; then she heard a long sniff, and a swifter pattering of the coming feet.
Her heart stood still with horror.
She saw a long, lean blood-hound leap into view, and circle slowly round the mere, his nose on the ground, his blood-shot eyes flaming through the dusk.
The colonel's sleuth-hound tracking her steps!
With what helpless fascination she watched the animal gliding like a phantom round and round, down to the lip of the mere, where she had bent to pluck a stalk, diverging a pace when she had diverged.
And behind the dog came Colonel Brand, with hands clasping each other by the wrists, and drooping figure, and head down on his breast, shuffling his dragging feet among the withered gorse as if weights held them down brooding along with the heavy and spiritless gait of an old man, or of one whose shoulders have been bowed thus by labor.
He looked not to right or left, but slouched on after his dog upon the bank, and, as he passed the woman in her hiding place, she saw that in his face, which no Brand of knightly English blood ever wore, since Sir Hildebrand broke his lance at Cressy.