arose great wings, armed with sharp hooks and prongs; it had stout
legs in front, with projecting claws; but there were no legs
behind,--the body running out into a long and powerful tail, finished
off at the end with a barbed point. This tail was coiled up under him,
the end sticking up just back of his wings.

The sculptor, or the people who had ordered this stone figure, had
evidently been very much pleased with it, for little copies of it,
also in stone, had been placed here and there along the sides of the
church, not very far from the ground, so that people could easily look
at them, and ponder on their curious forms. There were a great many
other sculptures on the outside of this church,--saints, martyrs,
grotesque heads of men, beasts, and birds, as well as those of other
creatures which cannot be named, because nobody knows exactly what
they were; but none were so curious and interesting as the great
griffin over the door, and the little griffins on the sides of the
church.

A long, long distance from the town, in the midst of dreadful wilds
scarcely known to man, there dwelt the Griffin whose image had been
put up over the churchgoer. In some way or other, the old-time
sculptor had seen him, and afterward, to the best of his memory, had
copied his figure in stone. The Griffin had never known this, until,
hundreds of years afterward, he heard from a bird, from a wild animal,
or in some manner which it is not now easy to find out, that there was
a likeness of him on the old church in the distant town. Now this
Griffin had no idea how he looked. He had never seen a mirror, and the
streams where he lived were so turbulent and violent that a quiet
piece of water, which would reflect the image of anything looking into
it, could not be found. Being, as far as could be ascertained, the