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
centuries before from the upper regions of light into the lower regions
of darkness. The original stocks of these horrible creatures were very
much the same as the animals now seen about farms and homes in the
country, with the exception of a few of them, which had been wild
creatures, such as foxes, and indeed wolves and small bears, which the
goblins, from their proclivity toward the animal creation, had caught
when cubs and tamed. But in the course of time, all had undergone
even
greater changes than had passed upon their owners. They had
altered--that is, their descendants had altered--into such creatures as
I have not attempted to describe except in the vaguest manner--the
various parts of their bodies assuming, in an apparently arbitrary and
self-willed manner, the most abnormal developments. Indeed, so little
did any distinct type predominate in some of the bewildering results,
that you could only have guessed at any known animal as the original,
and even then, what likeness remained would be more one of general
expression than of definable conformation. But what increased the
gruesomeness tenfold, was that, from constant domestic, or indeed
rather
Madhuri Noah
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