"And yet I live on them, and must keep a good countenance when they sniff and sneer at my work. Accidenti!" He cursed on his beard--an echo answered him: he looked, startled around; no hut, no hillock was there within a circle of half a mile, and he could not believe in the neighbourhood of man. At last he stepped onward, and thought "A gust of wind mocked thee!" Then suddenly it sounded again, nearer and clearer. He stood and listened keenly. "Am I near a cabin, or a fold where the cattle are lowing? It cannot be--it sounded differently--it sounds differently; and now--now"--and a shudder shook his whole frame. "It is the dogs," he said slowly.
The cry came nearer and nearer, hoarse as that of wolves; no barking or yelping, but a snarling howl, which the voice of the wind swept together into one uninterrupted, terrible melody. A paralyzing power seemed to exist in it, for the traveller stood motionless, his mouth and eyes rigidly open, his face half turned towards the side from which the battle-cry of the raging brutes swelled towards him.
At last he shook himself with fierce determination. "It is too late! they have long had the scent; and in this twilight I should fall before the tenth step if I tried to fly. Well, like a dog have I lived! and now, to be destroyed by my fellows!--there is sense in it! If I had a knife I would make it easier for my guests; but this"--and he tried the strong iron spike of his staff--"if there be but few of them, who knows whether my hunger may not survive theirs?"
He threw his cloak around him, so as to have his right arm free, and to form with its many folds a sort of protection to his left, and grasped his staff. With cold-blooded determination he examined the ground on which he stood. He found it free from grass, stony, and hard. "They may come!" he said, planting himself firmly upon his feet. He saw them now, and counted them in the gloaming. Five he counted, and then a sixth. They rave like fiends from hell--long-limbed, skeleton brutes! "Wait!" and he raised a heavy stone; "we must declare war according to custom."
Therewith he hurled the stone at the nearest, twenty paces from him. A redoubled howling answered--the pack was checked for a moment. One of them lay struggling on the ground.
"Armistice!" said the man. His lips trembled, his heart throbbed heavily against his left arm, which grasped his cloak spasmodically; but the lids over the keen eyes winked not. He saw his enemies break forth again, and their eyes glared through the darkness. They came on in couples, the largest first. A second stone rebounded from the bony chest of one of the leaders, and the ravening brute sprang, hoarsely snarling, against the dark form. A thrust, and he fell backwards on the sward, and the staff, whirled quickly round, striking heavily on his open jaws.
A horseman galloped through the grey of the winter's night, some few hundred paces from the scene of the struggle, over the pathless campagna. He pierced through the darkness towards the spot from whence the howling reached him, at short intervals, and saw a man standing, tottering, giving way, and again standing firm, as his enemies relinquished the attack, and once more stormed on him from all sides.
The horseman shuddered; he plunged the spurs into his horse's flanks, and flew towards them. The sound of the horse's hoofs reached the ear of the struggling man, but it seemed as if the sudden terror of hope deprived him of his last remaining strength; his arm sank, his brain whirled, and he felt himself torn down from behind,--tottered, and fell to the ground. Through the mists of approaching unconsciousness he heard the sound of pistol-shots, and then fainted.
When he recovered, and opened his eyes, he saw the face of a young man bending over him, on whose knee his head was resting, and whose hand was rubbing his temples with fresh-plucked wet grass. The horse stood steaming near them, and at his feet lay two dogs, writhing in the agonies of death.
"Are you wounded?" he heard asked.