“Oh, yes,” cried the Lady Isabelle joyfully; “how I long to clasp my dear brother in these arms. But hold, Sir Knight,” said she, her face again assuming an air of anxiety, “thou dost bleed, maugre all thou didst say. Truly thy left arm is most grievously torn by the miscreant wolf; let me bind it up with this rag here.” And notwithstanding all Assueton’s protestations to the contrary, she took off a silken scarf, and bound up his wounds very tenderly, even exposing her own lovely neck to the sun, that she might effect her charitable purpose.
“And now,” said she, “let’s on in the direction my father took; he and my brother may have probably met ere this. Hey, Robert,” cried she to a forester who appeared at the moment, “whither went my father?”
“This way, lady,” said he, pointing in a particular direction; “I heard his bugle-mot but now.”
“Charge thyself with the spoils of this wolf, Robert,” said the Lady Isabelle; “I do mean to have his felt hung up in the hall, in remembrance of the bold and desperate conflict, waged without aid of steel against him, by dint of thewes and sinews alone, by this valiant knight; ’tis a monster for size, the make of which is, I trow, rarely seen.”
“Nay, lady,” cried Assueton, “rather hang up his spoils in [[94]]commemoration of thine own brave deed; for it was thou who killed him. And had it not been for thee, gaffer wolf might, ere now, have made a dinner of me.”
“In truth, Sir Knight,” replied Isabelle, “hadst thou not held him by the throat so starkly, I trow I should have had little courage to have faced him.”
The lady vaulted on her palfrey, and Assueton, his left arm decorated with her scarf, and holding her bridle with his right, walked by the side of the palfrey, like a true lady’s knight, unwittingly engaged, for the first time in his life, in pleasing dialogue with a beautiful woman.
Sir Patrick Hepborne, who thought only of seeing his father, had rushed down the steep of Dunpender in the hope of meeting him somewhere near the base of the hill, for the sound of the chase evidently came that way. His old dog Flo had difficulty in following him; and stumbling over the stumps of trees, and the stones that lay in his way, he was at last completely left behind. As Sir Patrick had nearly reached the bottom of the steep, he too observed a large wolf making up the hill. The animal came at a lagging pace, and was evidently much blown. Hepborne hurled his hunting-spear at him without a moment’s delay, wounding him desperately in the neck; and, eager to make sure of him with his anelace, rushed forward, without perceiving a sudden declivity, where there was a little precipitous face of rock, over which he fell headlong, and rolling downwards his head came in contact with the trunk of an oak, at the foot of which he lay stunned and senseless. The wolf, writhing for sometime with the agony of the wound he had received, succeeded at last in extricating himself from the spearhead, and then observing the man from whose hand he had received it, lying at his mercy on the ground near him, he was about to take instant vengeance on him, when he was suddenly called on to defend himself against a new assailant.
This was no other than poor Flo, who, having followed his master’s track as fast as his old legs could carry him, came up at the very moment the gaunt animal was about to fasten his jaws on him. His ancient spirit grew young within him as he beheld his master’s danger. He sprang on the wolf with an energy and fury which no one who had seen him that morning could have believed him capable of, and, seizing his ferocious adversary by the throat, a bloody combat ensued between them.
Hepborne having gradually recovered from his swoon, and hearing the noise of the fight, roused himself, and, getting upon his legs, beheld with astonishment the miraculous exertions his [[95]]faithful dog was making in his defence, and the deadly strife that was waging between him and the wolf. The fierce and powerful animal was much an overmatch for the good allounde, who had already received some dreadful bites, but still fought with unabated resolution. Hepborne ran to his rescue, and burying his anelace in the wolf’s body, killed him outright. But his help came too late for poor old Flo, who licked the kind hand that was stretched out to succour and caress him, and, turning upon his side, raised his dim eyes towards his master’s face, and slowly closed them in death.