"The curse of St Withold upon these infernal porkers," said the swine-herd, after blowing his horn obstreperously, to collect together the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call with notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove themselves from the luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened, or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet, where several of them, half plunged in mud, lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of the voice of their keeper. "The curse of St Withold upon them and upon me," said Gurth; "if the two-legged wolf snap not up some of them ere nightfall, I am no true man.—Here, Fangs! Fangs!" he ejaculated at the top of his voice to a rugged wolfish-looking dog, a sort of lurcher, half mastiff, half greyhound, which ran limping about as if with a purpose of seconding his master in collecting the refractory grunters; but which, in fact, from misapprehension of the swine-herd's signals, ignorance of his own duty, or malice prepense, only drove them hither and thither, and increased the evil which he seemed to design to remedy. "A devil draw the teeth of him,"
