Sure enough, the great dog hit on the line of the wolves and got the
blood in his nostrils. He was puzzled, his tail went like a flag in a
gale as he nosed it out.
Prosper watched him keenly, it was touch-and-go, but never troubled
his breath. "Take your choice, friend," he said. The dog beat to and
fro for some long minutes. He could not deny himself--he followed the
wolves.
"That love-chase is like to be our salvation," said Prosper. "Wait
now. Here are some more of the Abbot's friends." It was as good as a
play to him--a hunter; but to Isoult, the wild little outcast, it was
deadly work. Like all her class, she held dogs in more fear than their
masters. You may cajole a man; to a dog the very attempt at it is a
damning proof against you.
As Prosper had predicted, the dogs, coming on by twos and threes, got
entangled in the cross-trail. They hesitated over it, circled about it
as the first had done, and like him they followed the hotter and
fresher scent. One, however, in a mighty hurry, ran clean through it,
and singled out his own again. They saw him coming; in his time he saw
them. He stopped, threw up his head, and bayed a succession of deep
bell-notes at them, enough to wake the dead.
"I must deal with this beast," Prosper said. "Leave me to manage him,
and stay you here." He dismounted, ungirt his sword, which he gave to
Isoult to hold, then began to run through the wood as if he was
afraid. This brought the dog on furiously; in fifty yards he was up
with his quarry. Prosper went on running; the dog chose his time, and
sprang for his throat. Prosper, who had been waiting for this, ducked
at the same minute; his dagger was in his hand. He struck upwards at
the dog as he rose, and ripped his belly open. "That was your last
jump, my friend," quoth he, "but I hope there are no more of you. It
is a game that not always answers."
It was while he was away upon this errand that Isoult thought she saw
a tall woman in a black cloak half-hidden behind a tree. The woman,
she could have sworn, stood there in the dusk looking fixedly at her;
it was too dark to distinguish anything but the white disk of a face
and the black mass she made in her cloak, yet there was that about
her, some rigid aspect of attention, which frightened the girl. She
turned her head for a moment to see Prosper homing, and when she
looked again into the trees there was certainly no woman. She thought
she must have fancied it all, and dismissed the thought without saying
anything to Prosper.