I reached the neighbourhood of the cottage before seven; and as I breasted the steep ascent which leads to the garden wall, I was struck with surprise to hear a dog. Dogs I had heard before, but only from the hamlet on the hillside above. Now, this dog was in the garden itself, where it roared aloud in paroxysms of fury, and I could hear it leaping and straining on the chain. I waited some while, until the brute’s fit of passion had roared itself out. Then, with the utmost precaution, I drew near again; and finally approached the garden wall. So soon as I had clapped my head above the level, however, the barking broke forth again with redoubled energy. Almost at the same time, the door of the cottage opened, and Ronald and the Major appeared upon the threshold with a lantern. As they so stood, they were almost immediately below me, strongly illuminated, and within easy earshot. The Major pacified the dog, who took instead to low, uneasy growling intermingled with occasional yelps.
‘Good thing I brought Towzer!’ said Chevenix.
‘Damn him, I wonder where he is!’ said Ronald; and he moved the lantern up and down, and turned the night into a shifting puzzle-work of gleam and shadow. ‘I think I’ll make a sally.’
‘I don’t think you will,’ replied Chevenix. ‘When I agreed to come out here and do sentry-go, it was on one condition, Master Ronald: don’t you forget that! Military discipline, my boy! Our beat is this path close about the house. Down, Towzer! good boy, good boy—gently, then!’ he went on, caressing his confounded monster.
‘To think! The beggar may be hearing us this minute!’ cried Ronald.
‘Nothing more probable,’ said the Major. ‘You there, St. Ives?’ he added, in a distinct but guarded voice. ‘I only want to tell you, you had better go home. Mr. Gilchrist and I take watch and watch.’
The game was up. ‘Beaucoup de plaisir!’ I replied, in the same tones. ‘Il fait un peu froid pour veiller; gardez-vous des engelures!’
I suppose it was done in a moment of ungovernable rage; but in spite of the excellent advice he had given to Ronald the moment before, Chevenix slipped the chain, and the dog sprang, straight as an arrow, up the bank. I stepped back, picked up a stone of about twelve pounds weight, and stood ready. With a bound the beast landed on the cope-stone of the wall; and, almost in the same instant, my missile caught him fair in the face. He gave a stifled cry, went tumbling back where he had come from, and I could hear the twelve-pounder accompany him in his fall. Chevenix, at the same moment, broke out in a roaring voice: ‘The hell-hound! If he’s killed my dog!’ and I judged, upon all grounds, it was as well to be off.
CHAPTER XXX—EVENTS OF WEDNESDAY; THE UNIVERSITY OF CRAMOND
I awoke to much diffidence, even to a feeling that might be called the beginnings of panic, and lay for hours in my bed considering the situation. Seek where I pleased, there was nothing to encourage me and plenty to appal. They kept a close watch about the cottage; they had a beast of a watch-dog—at least, unless I had settled it; and if I had, I knew its bereaved master would only watch the more indefatigably for the loss. In the pardonable ostentation of love I had given all the money I could spare to Flora; I had thought it glorious that the hunted exile should come down, like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and pour thousands in the lap of the beloved. Then I had in an hour of arrant folly buried what remained to me in a bank in George Street. And now I must get back the one or the other; and which? and how?