covered with grave-mold, rose slowly, as if pushed by a weak spiral
spring. Its knees were at the level of the floor, when with a quick
upward impulse like the silent leaping of a flame it grasped the
queue with both hands, drew up its body and took the tip in its
horrible yellow teeth. To this it clung in a seeming frenzy,
grimacing ghastly, surging and plunging from side to side in its
efforts to disengage its property from the beam, but uttering no
sound. It was like a corpse artificially convulsed by means of a
galvanic battery. The contrast between its superhuman activity and
its silence was no less than hideous!

Mr. Beeson cowered in his bed. The swarthy little gentleman
uncrossed his legs, beat an impatient tattoo with the toe of his boot
and consulted a heavy gold watch. The old man sat erect and quietly
laid hold of the revolver.

Bang!

Like a body cut from the gallows the Chinaman plumped into the black
hole below, carrying his tail in his teeth. The trapdoor turned
over, shutting down with a snap. The swarthy little gentleman from
San Francisco sprang nimbly from his perch, caught something in the
air with his hat, as a boy catches a butterfly, and vanished into the
chimney as if drawn up by suction.

From away somewhere in the outer darkness floated in through the open
door a faint, far cry--a long, sobbing wail, as of a child death-
strangled in the desert, or a lost soul borne away by the Adversary.
It may have been the coyote.