pknot to tail.

So the two stood, face to face, with perhaps a yard of rain-pierced air
between them.

The wind hushed its sighing to listen. The moon stared down, white
and dumb. Away at the back the sheep edged closer. While save for the
everlasting thunder of the rain, there was utter stillness.

An age, it seemed, they waited so. Then a voice, clear yet low and far
away, like a bugle in a distant city, broke the silence.

"Eh, Wullie!" it said.

There was no anger in the tones, only an incomparable reproach; the
sound of the cracking of a man's heart.

At the call the great dog leapt round, snarling in hideous passion. He
saw the small, familiar figure, clear-cut against the tumbling sky; and
for the only time in his life Red Wull was afraid.

His blood-foe was forgotten; the dead sheep was forgotten; everything
was sunk in the agony of that moment. He cowered upon the ground, and
a cry like that of a lost soul was wrung from him; it rose on the still
night air and floated, wailing, away; and the white waters of the Tarn
thrilled in cold pity; out of the lonely hollow; over the desolate
Marches; into the night.

On the mound above stood his master. The little man's white hair was
bared to the night wind; the rain trickled down his face; and his hands
were folded behind his back. He stood there, looking down into the dell
below him, as a man may stand at the tomb of his lately buried wife. And
there was such an expression on his face as I cannot describe.

"Wullie, Wullie, to me!" he cried at length; and his voice sounded weak
and far, like a distant memory.

At that, the huge brute came crawling toward him on his belly,
whimpering as he came, very pitiful in his distress. He knew his fate as
every sheep-dog knows it. That troubled him not. His pain, insufferable,
was that this, his friend and father, who had trusted him, should have
found him in his sin.

So he crept up to his master's feet; and the little man never moved.

"Wullie--ma Wullie!" he said very gently. "They've aye bin agin me--and
noo you! A man's mither--a man's wife--a man's dog! they're all I've
iver had; and noo ain o' they three has turned agin me! Indeed I am
alone!"

At that the great dog raised himself, and placing his forepaws on his
master's chest tenderly, lest he should hurt him who was already hurt
past healing, stood towering above him; while the little man laid his
two colds hands on the dog's shoulders.

So they stood,