lawn in the moonlight. The supernatural or rather subnatural ugliness
of
their faces, the length of legs and necks in some, and the apparent
absence of both or either in others, made the spectators, although in
one consent as to what they saw, yet doubtful, as I have said, of the
evidence of their own eyes--and ears as well; for the noises they made,
although not loud, were as uncouth and varied as their forms, and
could
be described neither as grunts nor squeaks nor roars nor howls nor
barks
nor yells nor screams nor croaks nor hisses nor mews nor shrieks, but
only as something like all of them mingled in one horrible dissonance.
Keeping in the shade, the watchers had a few moments to recover
themselves before the hideous assembly suspected their presence; but
all
at once, as if by common consent, they scampered off in the direction
of a great rock, and vanished before the men had come to sufficiently
to
think of following them.
My readers will suspect what these were; but I will now give them full
information concerning them. They were of course household animals
belonging to the goblins, whose ancestors had taken their ancestors
many
Madhuri Noah
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