I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction, of somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.
"I am afraid that you won't leave any for it," said I, timidly; after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making the remark. "There's no more to be got where that came from, and it may be angry." It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.
"Leave any for it? Who's it?" said my friend, stopping in his crunching of pie-crust.
"The Howl Beast. That you spoke of. That was hid with you."
"Oh ah!" he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. "That? Yes, yes! He don't want no wittles."
"I thought he looked as if it - he did," said I, correcting myself.
The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and the greatest surprise.
"Looked? When?"
"Just now."
"Where?"
"Yonder," said I, pointing.
He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his first idea about tearing out my throat had revived.
“There’s one out in the marshes as you said there would be. Didn't you hear the cannon last night?"
"Then, there was firing!" he said to himself.
"I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that," I returned, "for we heard it up at home, and that's further away, and we were shut in besides."
"Why, see now!" said he. "When a man's alone on these flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees the Hunters, with their iron spike-drivers shined up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the razor’d chains, hears the orders, and is laid hands on - and there's nothin'! Why, if I see one hunting party last night - coming up in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, tramp, clank, clank - I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day - But this Howler;" he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being there; "did you notice anything in him?"
"He had a nasty limp," said I, recalling what I hardly knew I knew.
"Not here?" exclaimed the man, striking his right leg mercilessly, with the flat of his hand.
"Yes, there!"
"Where is he?" He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of his grey jacket. "Show me the way he went. I'll pull him down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the dirk-saw, boy."
I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the Howl Beast, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet grass, sawing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the saw. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the dirk-saw was still going.
