Mechanically Lawrence picked up his stick before he went to join her.  Clara was huddled up over a pool of blood, her head between her knees:  not a pleasant sight for a young girl.  But Isabel, though white and trembling, was collected.  “I can’t feel her heart, I—­I’m afraid—­”

She broke off.  Her glance had travelled beyond Lawrence and her features were stiffening into a mask of fear.  “Oh, the dog, the dog!” she pointed past him.  “Billy, Billy, down, sir!”

From some eyrie on the hillside the Dane had watched without emotion the legitimate spectacle of his master beating his mistress:  in the war of the sexes, a dog is ever on the man’s side.  But when the tables were turned Billy went to the rescue.  He was coming round the corner of the cottage when Isabel caught sight of him, travelling in great bounds at the pace of a wolf, but silent.  Lawrence had but just time to swing Isabel behind him before the Dane leapt for his throat.  Lawrence struck him over the head, but the blow glanced:  so sudden, so thundering came the impact that Lawrence all but went down under it:  and once down. . . .

The great jaws snapped one inch from his cheek, and before the Dane could recover Lawrence had seized him by the throat and fought him off.  Then Lawrence set his back against the cottage wall and felt safer.  A second blow got home, and spoilt Billy’s beauty for ever:  it laid open his left eye and the left side of his jaw.  Undaunted, the Dane gave himself an angry shake, which spattered Lawrence with blood, and gathered his haunches for a second spring.  But by now Lawrence had clubbed his stick and was beating him about the head with its heavy knobbed handle.  Swift as the dog was, the man was swifter:  they fought eye to eye, the man forestalling every motion of the dog’s whipcord frame:  Lawrence’s blood was up, he would have liked to fight it out bare-handed.  They would not have been ill-matched, for when the Dane reared Lawrence overtopped him only by an inch or so, and the weight of the steelclad paws on his breast tore open his clothes and pinned him to the wall.  But Lawrence thrashed him off his feet whenever he tried to rise, till at length the lean muzzle sank with a low baffled moan.

Even then there was such fell strength in him that Lawrence dared not spare him, and blow rained on blow.—­“Don’t kill him,” said Isabel.  “Put this over his head.”

Lawrence took the length of serge she gave him and with characteristic indifference to danger stooped over the dog, whose spirit he admired, and tried to swathe his head in its heavy folds.  But, torn, blinded, baffled, the Dane was undefeated.  He wrenched his jaws out of their mufflings and rolled his head from side to side, snapping right and left.  “Oh Billy,” cried Isabel, “you know me, lie down, dear old man!” A pure-bred dog when sight and hearing are gone will recognize a familiar scent.  In an agony of pity Isabel flung her arm over the heaving shoulders—­