University of Virginia Library

THE BLOODHOUND SALADIN.

The monk Albertine, whose dark eyes had for
a moment been gleaming over the shoulders of the
bystanders, now advanced with a slow and measured
footstep, and confronted the Signior Aldarin,
with a look full of meaning and thought. Aldarin
returned the look, with a keen and searching
glance, and their eyes then mingled in one long
and ardent gaze, as though each man wished to
read the heart of his fellow.

With a look of calmness and perfect self-posession
Albertine turned to the Duke and took the
goblet from his hand.

He gazed at its depths for a moment, he was
about to speak, when the heart of every man in
the Red-Chamber was thrilled by a wild and terrific
howl, more fearful even than the yell of the dying,
that proceeded from among the curtains of the
death-couch, and echoed around the apartment.

“That sound,” exclaimed Aldarin, with a nervous
start; “That sound is from the couch of death!
It means, it means—”

A ruddy glow passed over his pale countenance,
and suddenly pausing he gazed round the group
in silence.

“It is the poor hound of our good Lord;” muttered
Robin the Rough, advancing. “The hound,
with skin black as death, which Lord Julian
brought from Palestine—he is howling over the
dead corse of his master. So have I heard him
howl for three days past, as the castle-bell tolled
the hour of high noon, beside the panels of yonder
door. Come hither brute; come hither Saladin.”

The hound, black as night, with an eye like
fire, came leaping through the throng and crouched
whining at the feet of the stout yeoman.

It was, in sooth, a noble hound, with full chest,
slender limbs, long neck, and tapering body,
marked by all that delicacy of proportion, that
beauty of shape, and grace of motion, which tradition
ascribes to the bloodhounds of the Eastern
lands. The head was like the head of a snake,
while the eye seemed almost instinct with a human
soul.

“Sir monk,” cried the Duke, in an imperious
tone, “were it not better for thee to tell us at once
whether the white powder in the goblet is poison?
or shall we wait thy pleasure while thou dost
weary thine eyes with gazing at yonder hound?”

The monk Albertine made a solemn inclination
of his head, and kneeling on the marble floor in
the centre of the group, he struck the edge of the
goblet upon the tesselated stone with a quick and
sudden motion of his hand.

The diamond-shaped stone of black marble was
strewn with the white sediment deposited in the
bottom of the goblet.

The hound sprang forward, and while his wild
eyes flashed and blazed, his nostrils dilated and
the sable animal snuffed the atmosphere of the
Red-Chamber, as he leaped quickly around the
group.

“He snuffs the smell of human blood!” muttered
the stout yeoman.

And while all was intense interest and suspense,
while a mingled feeling of surprise and terror and
nameless fear ran around the group, while every
eye was fixed upon the kneeling form of Albertine,
with the goblet upraised in his hand, the hound
Saladin passed from man to man, scenting the
garments of the bystanders, and glancing wildly
from face to face, from eye to eye.

He paused for a moment in front of the Signior
Aldarin, and uttered a low whining sound as he
gazed in the scholar's face.

“How long is this mummery to last?” exclaimed
Aldarin, advancing with a sudden step—“Tell
me, sir monk, is thy study over?”

The hound Saladin sprang suddenly aside from
the robes of the Signior and eagerly snuffing the
marble floor approached the monk Albertine, and
with a wild howling sound licked the white substance
from the diamond-shape stone.

“Is it poison?” asked the Duke, and the interest
of the group clustered around became absorbing
and intense.

“Some new mysteric of thine, learned scholar”
exclaimed Adrian Di Alberone, with a smile of
incredulity. “The man does not live, so false in
heart as to place a death-bowl to the lips of a warrior
like Julian of Albarone!”

“Is it poison!” exclaimed Albertine, gazing
round upon the group—“Behold!”

And as he spoke, the hound Saladin fell stiffened
and dead, upon the marble pavement, with a
single fearful struggle, a single terrible howl.—
His limbs were fearfully distorted, and his eyes
were starting from their sockets, while a thin white
foam hung round his serpent-like jaw.

There was one quick yell of horror thundering
around the apartment, and then you might have
heard the footsteps of the Invisible Death, all was
so fearfully silent and still.

“As God lives, my father has been murdered!”
shouted Adrian Di Albarone, as the expression of
incredulity lately visible in his manly face changed
to a look of pallid horror—“Now by the Sacrament
of God, he shall be avenged as never was murdered
man avenged before! “Who,” he shricked in
a husky voice, turning to the throng—“Who hath
done this murder?”

“Sir Duke,” exclaimed Aldarin, as though he
had not heard Adrian, “the encrusted substance
which fell from the death-bowl may be poisonous—”