“We shall die together,” said Cormac, taking his hands from his face and looking at Ethne solemnly. “It is fitting--that I who tied myself so blindly to you in life, should not be parted in death!” Ethne made no reply. “And yet,” he said, after a time, as though continuing some thought aloud, “I could have sworn at the Fair that you loved Elgiva and lamented her loss.” “Lamented her loss!” repeated Ethne, gloomily. “Ay, her loss meant all lost in those days--long ago I promised you should hear what the diviners told me at the Beltane festival, and now you shall hear it. They told me I should gain my lost possessions in Damnonia, in exchange for a Saxon maid. Now you know why I brought the great, fawning wench with me to Britain.” She started up, raging again. “Did the stars tell me right? Did they divine aright? Ah!” she turned on Cormac, “it was your silly calf-love for the Saxon gawk that stood in the way! I feared to delay lest you should discover my plans and prevent them--then I acted too quickly, and lost everything. I should have kept her with me until I was certain that Ethelbert would do as I wished.” Her rage was horrible to witness. As she stormed up and down the chamber there was a rustle in one of the corners, and the hound, Gelert, ran into the room. Ethne rushed upon him immediately--here was something on which to vent her fury. The creature crouched down in supplication before her--but she kicked and trampled him underfoot. “Beast!” she roared. “You haunt me like an evil genius; why did you not go with your mistress? Ah! curses upon her--she is safer now than I!” The animal shrank under her blows, with a strange moan that was almost a murmur of expostulation. After all he had gone through, and the battles in which he had fought, there was something almost human about the old hound. It was strange how, in his grief and search for Elgiva, he seemed determined to control the deep resentment he had always nursed against Ethne. He endured all her ill-usage patiently in the hope that, by her means, he might yet find Elgiva. He whimpered now like a whipt child. Cormac rose and thrust Ethne away from the creature. Gelert was now specially dear to him because of the lost Elgiva. Ethne turned on her foster-brother. In her rage she was a mad-woman--forgetting that the Saxons had bereft her of her weapons she sprang backward, fumbling at her girdle for her dagger; her face horribly distorted, showed to their full her beast-like tusks. The hound, looking on, understood the familiar action. He had lived too long among fighters not to know that she sought her sword; and that sword, he knew, was to be used against his master. He was an old warrior, well-trained in his work--many a man on the battle-field had received his death-wound from Gelert. With one spring his whole weight was hurled on Ethne; one short snap of his iron jaws and his old fangs had torn a fatal wound in her thin white throat.