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Can I forget that I have been branded as an outlaw stigmatised as a traitor a price set on my head as if I had been a wolf my family treated as the dam and cubs of the hill-fox, whom all may torment, vilify, degrade, and insult the very name which came to me from a long and noble line of martial ancestors, denounced, as if it were a spell to conjure up the devil with?"
Can I forget that I have been branded as an outlaw stigmatised as a traitor a price set on my head as if I had been a wolf my family treated as the dam and cubs of the hill-fox, whom all may torment, vilify, degrade, and insult the very name which came to me from a long and noble line of martial ancestors, denounced, as if it were a spell to conjure up the devil with?"
No man they met on the road, nor did they of Shadowy Vale look to meet any; because the Dusky Men were not great hunters for the more part, except it were of men, and especially of women; and, moreover, these hill-slopes of the mountain-necks led no-whither and were utterly waste and dreary, and there was nought to be seen there but snipes and bitterns and whimbrel and plover, and here and there a hill-fox, or the great erne hanging over the heath on his way to the mountain.
Bright told my father, by-the-way, that the legend of the fidelity of the dead adventurer's little dog, "who scared the hill-fox and the raven away," was far from being in accordance with the prosaic facts. This unsentimental little quadruped had, in truth, eaten up a large part of her master by the time his remains were discovered, and had, furthermore, brought into the world a litter of pups.
One day, as she came from the palace of the King, she met on the Moor of Loneliness a swineherd and two shepherd lads. And well though she knew that none might enter the forest, she led them to a well in its leafy depths. Then said this woman trusted of the King, 'Wait here by this well until the jay cry and the hill-fox bark.
Before lunch hounds chopped a mangy fox outside Prior's Wood; and it was not till the afternoon was getting on that they found a rover lying out in a field of mangolds. He must have been a hill-fox, who had been caught raiding in the lowlands, for he made a straight point for the Downs. There was the usual scurry. Boy Woodburn was, as always, the last away, with Silver in close attendance.
Of a sudden the older woman left her side, and bent as though she would gather a woodland flower. At the same moment was heard the cry of the jay and the bark of the hill-fox. Then came Lavarcam to the maiden's side. 'Passing strange is it, said Deirdre, 'to hear the jay cry and the hill-fox bark while yet the snow lies thick.
As they passed it, a blackbird rose up screaming, and a brace of wood-pigeons winged noisily away. "Hullo! hark to the yammerin'!" muttered Jim, stopping; "and at this time o' night too!" Some rabbits, playing in the moonlight on the outskirts of the wood, sat up, listened, and hopped back into security. At the same moment a big hill-fox slunk out of the covert.
Sir Walter Scott beautifully describes the scene: Dark-green was the spot, 'mid the brown mountain heather, Where the pilgrim of nature lay stretched in decay; Like the corpse of an outcast, abandoned to weather, Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay; Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended, For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended, The much loved remains of her master defended, And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.
All this while he had seen no four-footed beast, save now and again a hill-fox, and once some outlandish kind of hare; and of fowl but very few: a crow or two, a long-winged hawk, and twice an eagle high up aloft. Again, the third night, he slept in the stony wilderness, which still led him up and up.
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