erings; then they would start off, with tail in air and
horns lowered, and career a little way across the veldt, and return, as
though the fell fascination was greater than the terror which had first
appalled them, to resume their weird, hollow groaning as before. The
dogs, well accustomed to this performance, forbore to notice it, beyond
a low growl or two. Besides, they held the horns of the excited beasts
in wholesome respect.

Closing the shutters again, Mona returned into the room. Just as she
was about to get into bed, her glance was attracted by something. A
great dark object was moving across the floor. Repressing an impulse to
shriek aloud, she lowered her candle so as to dispel the shadow in which
the thing moved, for it was under the table, and then with a shuddering
horror she saw that it was a huge tarantula.

The evil-looking beast was of enormous dimensions. Outspread, it was
the size of a man's hand, and its great hairy legs and dull, black,
protruding eyes gave it the aspect of a demoniacal looking animal rather
than a mere insect, as it came shoggling across the floor; then stopped
suddenly, as its instincts warned it of danger.

All in a quiver of loathing and repulsion, she snatched up a large book
of bound-up music, and dropped it upon the hideous insect. She left it
where it lay, not caring to investigate farther; knowing, too, that the
thing would be crushed and flattened out of all life and shape beneath
the heavy volume. Where did it come from? Tarantulas were quite rare
in that high, open, bracing veldt, though plentiful enough in the lower
and hotter bush country. But even there she had never seen one anything
like this for size.

The nervous fears which had beset her throughout the evening had brought
something like exhaustion in their train. No sooner was the light out,
and her head upon her pillow, than she was fast asleep. Yet sound
though her slumbers were, a thread of uneasiness ran through them.
Outside, in the faint moonlight, the cattle still clustered about the
bloodstained spot, and even in her sleep she could still hear the pawing
of their hoofs, and the unceasing refrain of their dismal and hollow
groanings, half-soothing, half-terrifying in the mesmeric effect which
they produced upon the ever-changing waves of her consciousness, that
hovering border-line between wakefulness and the dream world. She
murmured the name of her absent lover, and again, in her sleeping