The creature ran, cat-like, with his belly close to the ground, his big, muscular limbs, showing as supple and slamp as a tiger’s, and his broad deep chest, and great hanging ears, all speckled white with flakes of foam. I looked for his master, but saw none; and, gazing more closely, observed a leash round the creature’s neck, and a broken leathern thong trailing beside him. This at once explained the rapidity with which he had overtaken me—the animal having broken away from those who led him, and it also sent a cheery flush of hope, dancing through my brain. Oh, how I cursed my heedlessness in leaving the carabine by the well! A handful of slugs would have stopped the blood-hound for ever, and my pursuers deprived of their guide, could seek me but at random through the woods. Could I manage him with the knife?—that was the question. I had no long time to debate it. I must either slay or be slain—there was no choice. I stopped, faced round, tore off my doublet, and wrapped it, in thick and heavy folds, round my left arm—shielding my wounded hand in addition, by grasping with it the inside of my strong and stiff felt hat. Then clutching my knife in my right, I knelt on one knee, and waited for the onset of the blood-hound. I had, indeed, hardly assumed my position of defence when he was on me. True to the instinct of his kind, he lifted neither eyes nor nose from the ground—running, truly and steadily, by the scent, until he was scarcely a couple of fathoms from me. Then, indeed, he flung up his nostrils in the air, and suddenly seeing me, uttered a loud splitting yell, champing at the same time the foam in a hot shower from his jaws, and then, with a great scrambling bound, furious and open-mouthed, pounced upon me, driving his teeth into the folds of the doublet, which I held before me as a shield, and dashing me, by the very force of his spring, over and over amid the grass, scrambling and tearing the skin from my shoulders, with his huge horny paws, and furiously shaking and riving the stuff of the doublet which, luckily for me, was both thick and strong. For a moment or two, I had no opportunity of using the knife, I could not see where to hit. There was before me but a vision of great foaming, tearing jaws, and flashing eyes, and struggling limbs—sometimes above me—sometimes beneath, as we rolled over and over in the scuffle. But at length, I had a chance; the broad muscular chest of the noble creature was left, for a moment, unsheltered by his fore-legs, and in a second I had driven the keen strong knife, through and through his lungs, the handle smiting the dog’s breast with a hollow blow. There was an immediate convulsion of the animal’s limbs. Letting go his hold of my doublet, he flung his muzzle into the air, and with a sound between a cough and a yell, threw up a hot sputtering shower of blood. Quick as thought, my reeking knife was withdrawn, and again and again plunged in up to the very hilt—the muscles of