Among the rest was an ill-thrived boy of about seventeen, who, having just returned from a skulking spell, was sent to the spring for water, and in returning let fall an elegant pitcher: it was dashed to shivers upon the rocks.

The skulking caution of his wild-beast nature asserted itself.

40 Unless the skulking cur is caught, The sirloin's spoiled, and I'm in fault.' Thus said: (for sure you'll think it fit That I the cook-maid's oaths omit)

Then as a skulking foe, a mystic spell Didst weave, and scorch me with the fires of hell While I was wrapped in sleep.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a skulking form appeared in the dim light which now fell from the stars.

If I read them right, they were Mohawk tracks and made within the hour, and how that skulking brute got away from me I cannot think.

Now, as he reached the orchard, up rose the sun in all his majesty filling the world with the splendour of his coming,before whose kindly beams the skulking mists and shadows shrank affrighted, and fled utterly away.

Everything had occurred so swiftly, so unexpectedly, as to leave me confusedthe surging of battle our way, the affair with Le Gaire, his strange death, the thought which had taken possession of Billie, the skulking murderer hid somewhere within the houseall combined to leave me in a state of perplexity.

Then would come those cynical scavengers of the desert, the vulture wheeling lower, the coyote skulking nearer, pausing suspiciously to sniff and to see if he moved.

[Footnote 3: skulking mischief: the latter word is Spanish, To mich is to play truant.