The sun was yet so hot on the exposed road that Dido and I were glad to get within the shelter of Daly’s Wood.  Though the sun poured upon the wood it was cool within it and steeped in a golden haze.  The pale stems of the springing trees looked like so many great candles in a golden house; there was a sweet sound of falling waters, for a little mountain stream ran through the wood, and in its neighbourhood the air was damp and deliciously sweet.  Where the water tumbled over broken boulders and formed a little pool Dido stood to drink, and I stood, too, a minute listening to the bird-songs of which the wood was full.

When we had turned round and gone on our way I observed that there was some one sitting on the stile which led out on the road nearly opposite the postern gate in our park wall and supposed it to be some one resting there who would rise up to let me pass.

I could not imagine myself being afraid of these quiet places, where, no matter what happened elsewhere, the people were always friendly and respectful.  But as I came close up to the man who sat on the stile and who had not turned his head at the sound of my foot on the path, all of a sudden I became filled with a nameless terror.

The wide shoulders, the rather massive head with the closely curling red hair; I seemed to recognize them all at once for Richard Dawson’s, and I was as frightened as ever was a hare of the dogs; nay, more frightened, for the hare has at least her speed.  My feet seemed clogged by leaden weights as they might be in the terror of a dream.  Then the man turned about with a smile which showed all his white teeth and I was sick with fear.

“It is the third day I have been waiting for you, you pretty creature,” he said.  “I am going to lift you over the stile, and then you shall give me a kiss for it.”

He flung his arms about me and I closed my eyes while I tried to push him away.  I felt his breath on my face, and my loathing of him was so great that it made me physically incapable of resistance.  I uttered one cry, but I felt that there was no body of sound in it to carry it even if anybody had been near.  But suddenly I heard a furious growl, and I felt myself released.

“Damn the brute!  She has bitten me,” he said furiously.

And there he was with the blood running down his hand, while my brave old dog stood by ready to defend me against all the world.

CHAPTER IX

A ROUGH LOVER

For a second or two we stood staring at each other while Richard Dawson mopped the blood from his hand.

“Don’t you see that your damned dog has bitten me?” he shouted, as though my silence infuriated him.

“I see,” I said with my hand on Dido’s collar to restrain her.  “You shouldn’t have been rude to me, sir.”

He stopped staunching his wound and burst into a great roar of laughter which had no good humour in it.