and with it, though, already, I see." He must have noticed the
handkerchief, for as he spoke the light from his lantern shone full
upon the face and neck of the child, or creature, in the young man's
arms, so clearly that, looking down at it, Beckwith himself could see
the clear grey of its intensely watchful eyes, and the very pupils of
them, diminished to specks of black. It was now, therefore, plain to
him that what he held was a foreigner indeed, since the parish
constable was unable to see it. Strap had smelt it, then seen it, and
he, Beckwith, had seen it; but it was invisible to Gulliver. "I felt
now," he says in his narrative, "that something was wrong. I did not
like the idea of taking it into the house; but I intended to make one
more trial before I made up my mind about that. I said good night to
Gulliver, put her on my bicycle and pushed her home. But first of all
I took the handkerchief from her neck and put it in my pocket. There
was no blood upon it, that I could see."

His wife, as he had expected, was waiting at the gate for him. She
exclaimed, as he had expected, upon the lateness of the hour. Beckwith
stood for a little in the roadway before the house, explaining that
Strap had bolted up the hill and had had to be looked for and fetched
back. While speaking he noticed that Mrs. Beckwith was as insensible
to the creature on the bicycle as Gulliver the constable had been.
Indeed, she went much further to prove herself so than he, for she
actually put her hand upon the handle-bar of the machine, and in order
to do that drove it right through the centre of the girl crouching
there. Beckwith saw that done. "I declare solemnly upon my honour," he
writes, "that it was as if Mary had drilled a hole clean through the
middle of her back. Through gown and skin and bone and all her arm
went; and how it went I don't know. To me it seemed that her hand was
on the handle-bar, while her upper arm, to the elbow, was in between
the girl's shoulders. There was a gap from the elbow downwards where
Mary's arm was inside the body; then from the creature's diaphragm her
lower arm, wrist and hand came out. And all the time we were speaking
the girl's eyes were on my face. I was now quite determined that I
wouldn't have her in the house for a mint of money."

He put her, finally, in the dog-kennel. Strap, as a favourite, lived
in the house; but he kept a greyhound in the garden, in a kennel
surrounded by a sort of run made o