“No, no! the echoes of this wood confound the ear of a stranger. It comes from the pine grove.” “What! the one we passed?” “Why, Martin, is this anything? You look pale.” “Wonderful!” said Martin, with a sickly sneer. “He asks me is it anything? Come, on, on! at any rate, let us reach a better place than this.” “A better place--for what?” “To stand at bay, Gerard,” said Martin gravely; “and die like soldiers, killing three for one.” “What's that sound?” “IT IS THE AVENGER OF BLOOD.” “Oh, Martin, save him! Oh, Heaven be merciful What new mysterious peril is this?” “GIRL, IT'S A BLOODHOUND.” CHAPTER XX The courage, like the talent, of common men, runs in a narrow groove. Take them but an inch out of that, and they are done. Martin's courage was perfect as far as it went. He had met and baffled many dangers in the course of his rude life, and these familiar dangers he could face with Spartan fortitude, almost with indifference; but he had never been hunted by a bloodhound, nor had he ever seen that brute's unerring instinct baffled by human cunning. Here then a sense of the supernatural combined with novelty to ungenteel his heart. After going a few steps, he leaned on his bow, and energy and hope oozed out of him. Gerard, to whom the danger appeared slight in proportion as it was distant, urged him to flight. “What avails it?” said Martin sadly; “if we get clear of the wood we shall die cheap; here, hard by, I know a place where we may die dear.” “Alas! good Martin,” cried Gerard, “despair not so quickly; there must be some way to escape.” “Oh, Martin!” cried Margaret, “what if we were to part company? Gerard's life alone is forfeit. Is there no way to draw the pursuit on us twain and let him go safe?” “Girl, you know not the bloodhound's nature. He is not on this man's track or that; he is on the track of blood. My life on't they have taken him to where Ghysbrecht fell, and from the dead man's blood to the man that shed it that cursed hound will lead them, though Gerard should run through an army or swim the Meuse.” And again he leaned upon his bow, and his head sank. The hound's mellow voice rang through the wood. A cry more tunable Was never halloed to, nor cheered with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, or in Thessaly.