But, as the chase drew nigher, "Up, Eadwulf!" cried his brother, quickly, "up, and away. Thou'lt have to stretch thy legs, even now, to reach the four lane ends, where the relays must be, when the stag crosses. Up, man, I say! Is this the newer spirit you spoke of but now? this the way you would earn largess whereby to win your freedom? Out upon it! that I should say so of my own brother, but thou'lt win nothing but the shackles, if not the thong. Away! lest my words prove troth." Eadwulf the Red arose with a scowl, but without a word, shook himself like a water-spaniel, and set off at a dogged swinging trot, the beautiful high-bred dogs bounding before his steps like winged creatures, and struggling with the leashes that debarred their perfect freedom--the man degraded, by the consciousness of misery and servitude, into the type of a soulless brute--the brutes elevated, by high breeding, high cultivation, and high treatment, almost into the similitude of intellectual beings. Kenric looked after him, as he departed, with a troubled eye, and shook his head, as he lost sight of him among the trees in the fore-ground. "Alack!" he said, "for Eadwulf, my brother! He waxes worse, not better." But, as he spoke, a nearer crash of the hounds' music came pealing through the tree-tops, and with a stealthy step he crossed over the summit to the rear of the hillock, where he concealed himself behind the boll of a stupendous oak, making his grayhound lie down in tall fern beside him. The approaching hounds came to a sudden fault, and silence, deep as that of haunted midnight, fell on the solitary place. CHAPTER II. THE GOOD SERVICE. "'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good green wood, When mavis and merle are singing; When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry, And the hunter's horn is ringing." LADY OF THE LAKE. There is something exceedingly singular in the depth of almost palpable silence which seems to fall upon a tract of woodland country, on the sudden cessation of a full cry of stag-hounds; which cry has in itself, apart from its stirring harmony of discords, something of cheerfulness and sociality, conveyed by its sound, even to the lonely wayfarer. Although, during that hush of the woods, the carol of the birds, the hum of insects, the breezy voice of the tree-tops, the cooing of the ringdove, the murmur of falling waters, and all the undistinguished harmonies of nature, unheard before, and drowned in that loud brattling, sound forth and fill the listener's ear, yet they disturb it not, nor seem to dissipate, but rather to augment, the influence of the silence.