It was late in the evening, and Lucy and Charlotte had gone to bed. They were in the habit of reading ghostly romances—The Mysteries of Udolpho, or Zastrozzi, or Matilda, or The Hermit of the Forest—until their candle flame sank into the little glassy lake of wax with a sharp whiff of smoke, and darkness fell into the room like a soft, silent avalanche….Scaring each other stiff, in fact. Tonight it was the turn of Rudolph, or The Phantom of the Crags. I tucked them up and left them to their horrors, and then climbed the spiral staircase that led to Count Karlstein’s study. I was going to ask a favor. Sorry as I’d be to miss the shooting contest, I wanted to ask him if I could go with them as their lady’s maid when they went to the hunting lodge. I knew they’d welcome my company; and surely he couldn’t object to a simple thing like that?

But I didn’t go into the study. I didn’t even knock; because when I got to the narrow landing (with the lancet window looking out over the steep leaded roof and the moon blowing along through a wild and gusty sky), I heard him talking. And the first word I heard was: “Zamiel…”

A chilly shiver passed through my heart. That word brought back in an instant all the terrified trembling of my childhood; and it was made worse, not better, for being spoken not in joky terror by Peter, acting the fool, but in the matter-of-fact tones of someone discussing a legal contract. I pinched the candle out and bent to listen closer. Yes, I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. And a good thing too.

“Zamiel?” said another voice—a cringing voice, an oily voice, that I knew at once: it belonged to Herr Arturo Snivelwurst, secretary to Count Karlstein and tutor to the girls. A lip-licking, moist-handed, creeping, smarming little ferret, with pomaded hair that he spent half an hour every morning carefully sticking into place so as to look like Napoleon. “Did I hear your grace aright?”

“Zamiel, I said, Snivelwurst,” said Count Karlstein. “The Demon Huntsman. The Prince of the Mountains!”

“Ah,” said Snivelwurst. “Um.”

“Now, listen carefully. For reasons I won’t go into now, I have an agreement with that gentleman. Every year on All Souls’ Eve he comes to hunt in my forests. He takes whatever prey he likes, and he’s welcome to it….But this year, our agreement runs out and I have to provide—are you listening, Snivelwurst? Are you following me?”

“Like a bloodhound, sir, most eager for the chase!”

“This year,” said Count Karlstein, “I have to provide a human prey—”

A gasp (oily) from Snivelwurst; a gasp (stifled) from me, and I clung to the little tin candlestick with both hands as I strained to hear what Count Karlstein said next.