“Swish!” went the heavy whip through the air, and fell across her fair cheek.

“Will that wake you, eh, or must I repeat the dose?”

The pain of the blow seemed to rouse her.  She rose, her loosed hair falling round her like a golden fleece, and a broad blue stripe across her ghastly face.  She stretched out her hands; she opened her great eyes, and in them blazed the awful light of madness.

He was standing, whip in hand, with his back to the lake; she faced him, a breathing, beautiful vengeance, and in a whisper so intense that the air was full of it, commenced a rambling prayer.

“Oh, God,” she said, “bless my dear Arthur!  Oh, Almighty Father, avenge our wrongs!”

She paused and fixed her eyes upon him, and they held him so that he could not stir.  Then, in strange contrast to the hissing whisper, there broke from her lips a ringing and unearthly laugh that chilled him to the marrow.  So they stood for some seconds.

The sound of angry voices had brought the bulldog back at full speed, and, at the sight of George’s threatening attitude, it halted.  It had always hated him, and now it straightway grew more like a devil than a dog.  The innate fierceness of the great brute awoke; it bristled with fury till each separate hair stood out in knots against the skin, and saliva ran from its twitching jaws.

George did not know that it was near him, but Angela’s wild eye fell upon it.  Slowly raising her hand, she pointed at it.

“Look behind you,” she cried.

The sound of her voice broke the spell that was upon him.

“Come, give me no more of your nonsense,” he said, and then, as much from vague fear and rampant brutality as from any other reason, again struck her with the whip.

Next second he was aware of a tremendous shock.  The dog had seen the blow, and had instantly launched itself, with all the blind courage of its race, straight at the striker’s throat.  It missed its aim, however, only carrying away a portion of George’s under-lip.  He yelled with pain, and struck at it with the whip, and then began a scene which, in its grotesque horror, beggars all description.  Again and again the dog flew at him, its perfect silence contrasting strangely with George’s shrieks of terror, and the shrill peals of horrible laughter that came hurrying from Angela’s lips as she watched the struggle.

At last the dog gripped the man by the forearm, and, sinking its great teeth into the flesh, hung its weight upon it.  In vain did George, maddened by the exquisite pain, dash himself and the dog against the ground:  in vain did he stagger round and round the glen, tearing at its throat with his uninjured hand.  The brute hung grimly on.  Presently there came an end.  As he reeled along, howling for help and dragging his fierce burden with him, George stumbled over a dead bough which lay upon the bank of the lake, and fell backwards into the water,