For many years they lived happily in Master Tarantula’s tower, playing three-handed whist, learning a few tricks of magic, listening to his conversation, keeping off the Afrits, and becoming almost as agnostic as he. Because he respected nothing, they began to respect each other, finding each other likable instead of merely habitual. At the propitiatory ceremonies they attended him as formerly they had attended the Queen. Sometimes he feigned weakness and leaned on them. In fact he was uncommonly strong and limber which he put down to the fresh air and exercise of his nocturnal flights. One night, he failed in his usual neat entry and made several blundering essays before he got through the window. His teeth chattered, his clothes were wet through. When he recovered his breath, he asked for brandy. With his teeth knocking on the glass, he told them he had been badly mauled in a thunderstorm. They got him to bed and heaped blankets on him. He was no sooner asleep than he began to leap like a fish in a net. Toward morning, he opened his eyes and did not recognize them. Death was hearsay to them, and seeing him fall into a quiet sleep they supposed he was recovering, till the old bed­maker came with her broom and bucket and told them he was dying and would be gone by nightfall. She had been his servant since his college days and thought the world of him. At dusk she came again. He seemed to be dying easily and contentedly. ‘There. He’s gone,’ she said, and held a mirror to his lips. His wings started out; he looked like a dead crow. But such death­bed erections are not unusual, she said. The wings are folded back, and nothing said of it.

The little dog had been snuffing and scuffling among the drifted leaves. If the night-smells were interesting to him, they must be intoxicating to her. It would not do to let her go out of sight—out of lantern-light, rather. He flipped open the lantern door, and played the beam of light this way and that. A hoary little world with no little dog in it. He whistled. All of a sudden, blown from nowhere like a dead leaf, she was rubbing against his legs. He put on her lead, to take her back to their mistress—who would not thank him for the state she was in, her stomach draggled, her feathered legs and ears bestuck with holly leaves. Where had she picked up holly leaves? He did not remember a holly in this stretch of the policies. He played his lantern in search of it, saw it lurking behind the bulk of a clipped yew, admired its glistening foliage, turned away. But as the beam of light slipped from the yew, he caught the glint of a pair of motionless, reflecting eyes. By night the eyes of the mildest dog reflect back a savage red. Cats’ eyes shine topaz or amber. The eyes of a fox are a vivid breath-taking green. The eyes staring out of the darkness of the yew, the darkness of the night, were a steely blue.