So it was now, on the furzy side of Cnocán an Ceoil Sidhe; she knew
that the moment had come. She sat down on a ledge of rock, and waited,
throbbing with anticipation, and had not long to wait. A brown shadow
moved in the bracken near the dolmen, a brown face peered with
infinite caution, round a flank of the great stones.

"Yoop! the little bitchie!" said Christian to the horizon. Christian
was an apt scholar, and Cottingham's tone and idiom were alike
accurately rendered.

The lady thus addressed gazed with a greater intensity, but did not
move. Christian took a piece of dog-biscuit from the ragged pocket of
the kennel-coat, and, still walking closely in Cottingham's steps, bit
it, ate a part of it, and carelessly flung the remainder in the
direction of the shadow. This stole forth, and, having snapped up the
biscuit, sank back into the covert. Christian did not move.

"Amazon!" she crooned, in tones in which a doting wood-pigeon might
apostrophise a sickly fledgling; "Amazon, my darling!"

Another piece of biscuit accompanied the apostrophe, and poor Amazon,
who was indeed very lonely and very hungry, capitulated, and came
sidling up to the charmer, with propitiatory smiles, and deprecating
stern wagging, beneath her, and in advance of her hind legs, instead
of above her and behind them.

"'Olding the buckle in the right 'and," said Christian to herself, in
faithful quotation from the great ensample, as with a swiftness and
decision that were creditable to her training, she put the couples on