speech, let it alone.
"And the dog: I mustn't forget the dog. They have a thoroughbred
Great Dane. Mr. Bendish gave Ben the puppy because it was the
worst of the litter and they thought it would die: but it didn't
die--no animal does that Ben gets hold of--and he's too fond of
it now to part with it, though a dog fancier from Amesbury has
offered him practically his own price for it."

"I should like to see the Dane."

"Well, you will, if you come with me. There's the cottage."

They had turned a bend and the head of the dale lay before them,
a mere dimpling depression between breasts of chalky grass. Set
close by the way on a cross-track, which forded the brook by
stepping stones and went on over the downs to Amesbury, stood a
small, square, tumbledown cottage, its door opening on primeval
turf, though behind it a plot of garden enclosed in a quickset
hedge provided Mrs. Janaway with cabbages and gooseberries and
sour apples and room to hang out the clothes.

"Ben won't be in, but Billy will be looking after Clara. Billy
is no good with the sheep, but he's death on tramps. In fact if
I weren't here it wouldn't be too safe for you to go to the door.
A Dane can pull any man down: I've heard even Jack Bendish say he
wouldn't care to tackle him--"

Even Jack Bendish! Lawrence smiled. He felt the prick of
Isabel's blade, it amused him, automatically he reacted to it,
she made him want to fight the Dane first and Jack Bendish
afterwards--but he retained just too much of the ascendancy of
his six and thirty years to gratify her by self-betrayal.
"You're a very brave young lady," he said cheerfully, "but if I
were Val--"

He stopped short. From the cottage window, now not twenty yards
off, there had come a burst of the most appalling screams he had
ever heard in his life, the mechanical screaming of mortal agony.
Isabel went as white as chalk and even Hyde felt the blood turn
cold at his heart. Next moment the door was torn open and out of
it came a big red-bearded man, dressed in a brown tweed jacket
and velveteen trousers tied at the knees, and prancing high in a
solemn jig. In one hand he held up an iron stake and in the
other a rag of red and black carpet . . . the body of a woman in
a black dress, her arms and legs hanging down, her face a scarlet
mask that had ceased to scream.

"Keep back, Isabel," said Lawrence: then, running across the
turf, "Drop that, Janaway! drop her!" in the hard authorita