over his dead body. But the treacherous Penny grew first restive, then
plainly desirous of returning to his home. At last, after many efforts to
corrupt the adventurer, he started off briskly alone--cornerwise, as
little dogs seem always to run--fleeing shamelessly toward that east
where shone the tame lights of Virtue.

Left alone, the little boy began strangely to remember certain phrases
from a tract that Clytie had tried to teach him--"the moment that will
close thy life on earth and begin thy song in heaven or thy wail in
hell"--"impossible to go from the haunts of sin and vice to the presence
of the Lamb"--"the torments of an eternal hell are awaiting thee"--

"To-night may be thy latest breath,
Thy little moment here be done.
Eternal woe, the second death,
Awaits the Christ-rejecting one."

This was more than he had ever before been able to recall of such matters.
He wished that he might have forgotten them wholly. Yet so was he turned
again to better things. Gradually he began to have an inkling of a
possibility that made his blood icy--a possibility that not even the
spectacle of Milo Barrus having interesting things done to him could
mitigate--namely, a vision of himself in the same plight with that person.

Now it was that he began to hear Them all about him. They walked
stealthily near, passed him with sinister rustlings, and whispered over
him. If They had only talked out--but they whispered--even laughing,
crying and singing in whispers. This horror, of course, was not long to
be endured. Yet, even so, with increasing myriads of Them all about,
rustling and whispering their awful laughs and cries--it was no