“No man could be more attentive to ladies than he,” she says, still musing. “His manner is of the best.”
“Is it?” says I. “I wish he would come here and show us some of it.”
“He looks better in a withdrawing-room,” says she, giving the merest glance at my torn and mud-stained garments.
“I daresay he will grace some corner of hell,” says I, savage as a bear with a sore lug.
She turned and looked at me.
“You and I don’t seem to agree,” she says.
“Faith! I don’t care whether we do or not!” I says, like to weep with the pain of my foot, and the vexation into which she threw me.
She gave me a sharp glance, and suddenly I saw her eyes melt in the curiousest fashion. She was sitting near me on the wet stones and she put out her hand to mine with a quick gesture. But what she had it in mind to say or do——
There was a rustle at the mouth of the bridge, and we turned our heads to see a great hound glaring at us from between the bushes that his shoulders had pushed aside. “Tracked, by God!” says I, and without a thought I snatched a pistol from my belt and fired at the brute’s open jaws. He fell, a quivering heap, into the stream at our feet, and the noise of the pistol rolled and echoed along the bridge, “Oh, foolish!” she cried, “they will hear it—they cannot be far off.” She looked at the dog and I saw her eyes fill with tears. “Poor dog!” said she.
But now that danger was at hand I was quick to think and to act. I drew out the bag of gold that I had carried—she already had the jewels in another bag—and handed it to her. “Here,” says I, “take this, cousin—and cousin,” I says, “whether we’ve agreed or not don’t forget that I tried to serve you. A curse on this foot o’ mine!” I says, struggling to get into a standing posture, “I’d give anything——”