“Take care; he is dangerous!” cried the girl.
Finding she had no power upon him, Mrs Catanach forsook him, and, in despairing fury, rushed at his mistress. Demon saw it with one flaming eye, left the cur—which, howling hideously, dragged his hind quarters after him into the house—and sprang at the woman. Then indeed was Lady Florimel terrified, for she knew the savage nature of the animal when roused. Truly, with his eyes on fire as now, his long fangs bared, the bristles on his back erect, and his moustache sticking straight out, he might well be believed, much as civilization might have done for him, a wolf after all! His mistress threw herself between them, and flung her arms tight round his neck.
“Run, woman! Run for your life!” she shrieked. “I can’t hold him long.”
Mrs Catanach fled, cowed by terror. Her huge legs bore her huge body, a tragi-comic spectacle, across the street to her open door. She had hardly vanished, flinging it to behind her, when Demon broke from his mistress, and going at the door as if launched from a catapult, burst it open and disappeared also.
Lady Florimel gave a shriek of horror, and darted after him.
The same moment the sound of Duncan’s pipes as he issued from the town-gate, at which he always commenced instead of ending his reveillé now, reached her, and bethinking herself of her inability to control the hound, she darted again from the cottage, and flew to meet him, crying aloud,—
“Mr MacPhail! Duncan! Duncan! stop your pipes and come here directly.”
“And who may pe calling me?” asked Duncan, who had not thoroughly distinguished the voice through the near clamour of his instrument.
She laid her hand trembling with apprehension on his arm, and began pulling him along.
“It’s me,—Lady Florimel,” she said. “Come here directly. Demon has got into a house and is worrying a woman.”