"Have done with this childish vaunting of thy strength," said Tyrrell. "An thou wilt but expend thy energies to the task in hand, 'twill soon be done." "But, can our honored guest be of a mind to exchange me a buffet, good my brother, I should be remiss in the matter of common courtesy did I not stand ready to favor him," returned Zenas. "Come, come!" impatiently exclaimed Tyrrell, allowing Sir Richard no opportunity of answering the implied challenge. "Let us have done at once with the burial of poor Demon." He and his brother then led the way outside, carrying between them the body of the hound. Sir Richard followed them to where they laid it down at the foot of the jagged rock that, in the daylight, could be seen at a great distance along the roadway. By this hour the night had turned keen, as nights are wont to do along the Highlands, and as he stood idly by watching the inn-keeper and the hunchback busily plying spade and mattock, he grew uncomfortably sensible of the increasing cold, which seemed to set its chill touch upon his very bones. At rare intervals the pale disc of the moon could be vaguely distinguished when one of the thinner clouds scudded across its face. But when the heavier clouds rolled beneath it, the land was blotted out in deepest darkness, which the splotch of light shed by the wavering torch served well to accentuate. Fantastic shadows wove themselves about the grave-diggers' feet. These, as they rippled away, grew to tremendous proportions as they merged with the circle of gloom that hemmed them in after the manner of an ebon wall. It was during this dismal half-hour, more than ever after, that Sir Richard missed the jovial companionship of poor Belwiggar. The thought came to him that he was a being apart, who had been set down there alone in a mystic environment, and, willy-nilly, his mind again became tenanted with calamitous forebodings. He fair ached again to stretch his legs before the fire, and hailed with unmingled delight the moment when the inn-keeper and his brother clambered from out the grave and lowered the hound within. It was as they were heaving back the loosened earth that he heard a faint, clear sound steal out upon the silence of the night. It seemed to him as the sound of a maiden's voice released in song. He was straining eagerly to catch the next sweet, quivering note when Tyrrell's deep voice broke suddenly into an English war song, and with a tuneful lilt that came far from appealing unpleasantly to the ear. Moreover, with such a hearty goodwill did he sing it that the echoes of the resonant notes were flung reverberating far across the plain.