A vital part had been struck, and the wolf rolled over, tearing the grass with its teeth, and wallowing in its blood. Then, full of rage for the temporary terror with which it had inspired him, the fierce earl sprang upon it, and buried his sharp dagger again and again to the cross-guard in its body, though he received more than one terrible laceration from its claws, as the agonies of death alternately convulsed and relaxed them. Clutching its lower jaws by the shaggy fur, with three deep gushes he completely shred off its head, and then reclined breathlessly against the tree. "Well, and so I have conquered thee!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, as he spurned the carcase with his foot. "Devilish monster, to me thy head is worth a penny from every man in Dysart--a goodly sum for an earl, forsooth! But as I lack these pennies sorely to pay my way to England, to the Highlands, or elsewhere, I will even seek the prior of St. Denis with my prize, midnight though it be." Tying the four corners of his mantle together, he put the head into it, and arming himself with a fragment of his spear, descended to the gate of the Black Friary; but, as the wind still blew, the rain lashed the stone walls and grated windows, while the sea boomed on the rocks below, and the worthy master-porter slept like a dormouse, the din made by the earl at the door was unheard. "The great devil confound thee!" he muttered, turning away; "for I must even go without my pence and my supper to boot." Remembering his first project of the caverns, he scrambled along the rocky and shingly beach for more than two miles, until a ray of light, which streamed from a fissure in the bluffs, far across the wet sands and tumbling billows, attracted his attention. Turning to the left, he approached it--the fissure widened, and entering boldly, he found himself in one of those long and deep weems, or caverns, which are there so numerous; and immediately a band of outlaws and smugglers surrounded him. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE WEEM. "Blow ye horns, And rouse each wilder passion of the soul, To drown the voice of Nature! He must die! He who puts forth his hand to seize a crown Must stake his all upon the mighty game." KÖRNER'S _Expiation_, a Drama. "Oho! here cometh _another_ guest, whom the high wind bath blown us this eerie night!" cried one of the occupants of the weem, as the whole party arose and stood around the intruder. Tall, strong, armed with a broken spear, smeared with mud from the paws of the wolf, and covered with gouts of its blood, which hung upon his matted hair and bushy beard, the aspect of the earl was sufficiently formidable to command the respect of the desperadoes among whom he had intruded; and, at a wave of his right hand and arm--the latter being drenched in blood to the elbow--they all shrunk back instinctively and grasped their clubs and poniards.