The uproar had now continued for some time: throats were getting sore,
tongues clammy, voices hoarse, and words incoherent, when a sudden check
was given to the useless clamor by an incident quite in unison with the
disturbance itself. Two enormous dogs were in attendance hard by,
apparently awaiting the movements of their respective masters, who were
lost to view in the mass of heads and bodies that stopped the passage of
the gate. One of these animals was covered with a short, thick coating of
hair, whose prevailing color was a dingy yellow, but whose throat and
legs, with most of the inferior parts of the body, were of a dull white.
Nature, on the other hand, had given a dusky, brownish, shaggy dress to
his rival, though his general hue was relieved by a few shades of a more
decided black. As respects weight and force of body, the difference
between the brutes was not very obvious, though perhaps it slightly
inclined in favor of the former, who in length, if not in strength, of
limb, however, had more manifestly the advantage.
It would much exceed the intelligence we have brought to this task to
explain how far the instincts of the dogs sympathised in the savage
passions of the human beings around them, or whether they were conscious
that their masters had espoused opposite sides in the quarrel, and that it
became them, as faithful esquires, to tilt together by way of supporting
the honor of those they followed; but, after measuring each other for the
usual period with the eye, they came violently together, body to body, in
the manner of their species.
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