The Forest Lovers

Then at last Prosper reined up, listening too. "Hush!" he said, "what

is that?"

This was a new sound, more hasty and murmurous than any girl's heart,

and much more dreadful than the music of the still distant hounds; it

was very near, a rushing and pattering sound, as of countless beasts

running. Isoult knew it.

"Wolves!" she said; "let be, there is no harm from them save in the

winter."

As she spoke a grey bitch-wolf came trotting through the trees,

swiftly but in pain, and breathing very short. She was covered with

slaver and red foam, her tongue lolled out at the side of her mouth

long and loose, she let blood freely from a wound in the throat, and

one of her ears was torn and bleeding. She looked neither to right nor

left, did not stay to smell at the scent of the horse; all her pains

were spent to keep running. She broke now and again into a rickety

canter, but for the most part trotted straight forward, with many a

stumble and missed step, all picked up with indescribable feverish

diligence; and as she went her blood flowed, and her panting kept pace

with her padding feet. So she came and so went, hunted by what

followed close upon her; the murmur of the host, the host itself--dogs

and bitches in a pack, making great pace. They came on at a gallop, a

sea of wolves that surged restlessly, yet were one rolling tide. Here

and there a grinning head cast up suddenly out of the press seemed

like the broken crest of some hastier wave impatient with his fellows;

so they snarled, jostled, and snapped at each other. Then one, playing

choragus, would break into a howl, and there would be a long anthem of

howls until the forest rang with the terror; but the haste, the

panting and the padding of feet were the most dreadful, because

incessant; the thrust head would be whelmed, the sharp voice drowned

in howls; the grey tide and the lapping of it never stopped.

The fugitives watched this chase, in which they might have read a

parable of their own affair, sweep past them like a bad dream. In the

dead hush that followed they heard what was a good deal more

significant for them, the baying of the dogs.

"What now?" said Prosper to himself, "there are the dogs. If I make

haste they can make it better; if I stay, how on earth shall I keep my

convoy out of their teeth?"

It was too late to wonder; even at that moment Isoult gasped and

caught at his arm, leaning from her saddle to cling to him as she had

done once before. But this was a danger not to be shamed away by a man

armed. He followed her look, and saw the first dog come on with his

nose to the ground. A thought struck him. "Wait," he said.