Day was fast sinking behind the trees, and making golden boughs
overhead. Lee stood at the hut door watching the sun set, and thinking,
perhaps, of old Devon. He seemed sad, and let us hope he was regretting
his old crimes while time was left him. Night was closing in
on him, and having looked once more on the darkening sky, and the fog
coldly creeping up the gully, he turned with a sigh and a shudder into
the hut, and shut the door.
Near midnight, and all was still. Then arose a cry upon the night so
hideous, so wild, and so terrible, that the roosting birds dashed off
affrighted, and the dense mist, as though in sympathising fear,
prolonged the echoes a hundred fold. One articulate cry, "Oh! you
treacherous dog!" given with the fierce energy of a dying man, and then
night returned to her stillness, and the listeners heard nothing but
the weeping of the moisture from the wintry trees.
* * * * *
The two perpetrators of the atrocity stood silent a minute or more,
recovering themselves. Then Hawker said in a fierce whisper,--
"You clumsy hound; why did you let him make that noise? I shall never
get it out of my head again, if I live till a hundred.
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