“Not a bit of it,” I cried; “no wraith nor warlock this time, friend, but flesh and blood. Yet I’m bound to say I have never been nearer ghostdom than now; a day of this moor would mean death to me.”
He shook me hurriedly and warmly by the hand, and stared in my face, and stammered, and put an arm about my waist as if I were a girl, and turned me about and led me to a little tree that lifted its barren branches above the moor. He was in such a confusion and hurry that I knew something troubled him, so I left him to choose his own time for explanation. When we got to the tree, he showed me his black knife—a very long and deadly weapon—laid along his wrist, and “Out dirk,” said he; “there’s a dog or two of Italy on my track here.” His mind, by the stress of his words, was like a hurricane.
Now I knew something of the Black Dogs of Italy, as they were called, the abominable hounds that were kept by the Camerons and others mainly for the hunting down of the Gregarich.
“Were they close on you?” I asked, as we prepared to meet them.
“Do you not hear them bay?” said he. “There were three on my track: I struck one through the throat with my knife and ran, for two Italian hounds to one knife is a poor bargain. Between us we should get rid of them before the owners they lag for come up on their tails.”
“You should thank God who got you out of a trouble so deep,” I said, astounded at the miracle of his escape so far.
“Oh ay,” said he; “and indeed I was pretty clever myself, or it was all bye with me when one of the black fellows set his fangs in my hose. Here are his partners; short work with it, on the neck or low at the belly with an up cut, and ward your throat.”
The two dogs ran with ferocious growls at us as we stood by the little tree, their faces gaping and their quarters streaked with foam. Strong cruel brutes, they did not swither a moment, but both leaped at M’Iver’s throat. With one swift slash of the knife, my companion almost cut the head off the body of the first, and I reckoned with the second. They rolled at our feet, and a silence fell on the country. Up M’Iver put his shoulders, dighted his blade on a tuft of bog-grass, and whistled a stave of the tune they call “The Desperate Battle.”
“If I had not my lucky penny with me I would wonder at this meeting,” said he at last, eyeing me with a look of real content that he should so soon have fallen into my company at a time when a meeting was so unlikely. “It has failed me once or twice on occasions far less important; but that was perhaps because of my own fumbling, and I forgive it all because it brought two brave lads together like barks of one port on the ocean. ‘Up or down?’ I tossed when it came to putting fast heels below me, and ‘up’ won it, and here’s the one man in all broad Albainn I would be seeking for, drops out of the mist at the very feet of me. Oh, I’m the most wonderful fellow ever stepped heather, and I could be making a song on myself there and then if occasion allowed. Some people have genius, and that, I’m telling you, is well enough so far as it goes; but I have luck too, and I’m not so sure but luck is a hantle sight better than genius. I’m guessing you have lost your way in the mist now?”
He looked quizzingly at me, and I was almost ashamed to admit that I had been in a maze for the greater part of the morning.