第78章 THE TAILLESS TYKE AT BAY(4)

An' mony an anxious day I thought We wad be beat.'

An' noo we are, Wullie--noo we are!"

So he went on, repeating the lines over and over again, always with the same sad termination.

"A man's mither--a man's wife--a man's~ dog! they three are a' little M'Adam iver had~ to back him! D'ye mind the auld mither, Wullie? And her, 'Niver be down-hearted, Adam; ye've aye got yer mither,' And ae day I had not. And Flora, Wullie (ye remember Flora, Wullie? Na, na; ye'd not) wi' her laffin' daffin' manner, eryin'

to one: 'Adam, ye say ye're alane. But ye've me--is that no enough for ony man?' And God kens it was --while it lasted!" He broke down and sobbed a while. "And you Wullie--and you! the only man friend iver I had!" He sought the dog's bloody paw with his right hand.

"'An' here's a hand, my trusty flee, An gie's a hand o' thine;An' we'll tak' a right guid willie-waught, For auld lang syne.'

He sat there, muttering, and stroking the poor head upon his lap, bending over it, like a mother over a sick child.

"They've done ye at last, lad--done ye sair. And noo I'm thinkin'

they'll no rest content till I'm gone. And oh, Wullie!"--he bent down and whispered--" I dreamed sic an awfu' thing--that ma Wullie--but there! 'twas but a dream."So he sat on, crooning to the dead dog; and no man approached him. Only Bessie of the inn watched the little lone figure from afar.

It was long past noon when at length he rose, laying the dog's head reverently down, and tottered away toward that bridge which once the dead thing on the slope had held against a thousand.

He crossed it and turned; there was a look upon his face, half hopeful, half fearful, very -piteous to see.

"Wullie, Wullie, to me!" he cried; only the accents, formerly so fiery, were now weak as a dying man's.

A while he waited in vain.

"Are ye no comin', Wullie?" he asked at length in quavering tones.

"Ye've not used to leave me."

He walked away a pace, then turned again and whistled that shrill, sharp call, only now it sounded like a broken echo of itself.

"Come to me, Wullie!" he implored, very-pitifully. "'Tis the first time iver I kent ye not come and me whistlin'. What ails ye, lad?"He recrossed the bridge, walking blindly like a sobbing child; and yet dry-eyed.

Over the dead body he stooped.

"What ails ye, Wullie?" he asked again. "Will you, too, leave me?"Then Bessie, watching fearfully, saw him bend, sling the great body on his back, and stagger away.

Limp and hideous, the carcase hung down from the little man's shoulders. The huge head, with grim, wide eyes and lolling tongue, jolted and swagged with the motion, seeming to grin a ghastly defiance at the world it had left. And the last Bessie saw of them was that bloody, rolling head, with the puny legs staggering beneath their load, as the two passed out of the world's ken.

In the Devil's Bowl, next day, they found the pair: Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull, face to face; dead, not divided; each, save for the other, alone. The dog, his saturnine expression glazed and ghastly in the fixedness of death, propped up against that humpbacked boulder beneath which, a while before, the Black Killer had dreed his weird; and, close by, his master lying on his back, his dim dead eyes staring up at the heaven, one hand still clasping a crumpled photograph; the weary body at rest at last, the mocking face--mocking no longer--alight with a whole-souled, transfiguring happiness.