"Safe?" echoed Pŭl-Yūn hoarsely, catching his breath, "with all thy weapons at the foot of the cliff, and that half-crippled wolf between thee and them?--was there no scraping past him?"
"It was not to be done. He was well-placed astride the outer angle of the buttress with both feet firm; but the only holds for getting down that _cheminée_ lay close under his hand, and he knew it. I worked down to within my length of him, but it would not do. I had to return to my ledge and wait."
"He made mouths at me and said all the worst that he knew. No, I will not tell thee what he said. This is his scalp, is not that enough?"
"First he fixed his eyes upon mine and would have charmed me down, and when that would not serve, he must show me point by point what must be the end; this hold, and that hold, and then the one next to him; and that, as I must needs come down feet foremost, he would set his hand or his teeth in me, for he was too badly hurt to get down himself. And it was all--_Come down to me, my Little Love, and thou and I will go gently to the bottom together, and thou shalt sleep long (Oh long!) and soundly (very soundly) in my arms!_"
"Eh, but he said _that_?" blurted the husband. "Which didst say was his scalp?"
"What matter?--nay, thou must not spoil it! It was almost the last thing he did say. Oh, but we were thirsty, he and I! I sucked the rock!--and cold--we were cold; I could see him shaking. Is he cold now, dost thou think? I hope he is very, very cold!"
"And then?" asked the husband, recovering himself, and prosaically detached from the possible sensations of a dead enemy, but Dêh-Yān paused.
Yes, what then?--for there seemed no way out of this stale-mate. The man might cling on there until the woman above him perished of the night's wind-frost, of exhaustion, or thirst, or made some despairing attempt and met her death so.
But, what of the other, the brute denizens of the glen? The rapid movement of a chase hath a stimulating influence upon whatever is within sight or hearing. Have we not seen the apparition of a pack of hounds in full cry set a whole countryside in motion?--horses at grass, calves, colts, sows, pigs of all sizes, breaking bounds, yea, the heavy-footed Wessex labourer, school-children, the curate upon his rounds, and the village postman upon his, swept out of their several orbits and drawn into the tail of the passing comet?