ild commotion within. They shrieked with fright, and banged
the door against a strong force which was beginning to push from the
other side.

The old grandfather rose, pale and agitated, his pipe falling from his
nerveless clasp.

"This night," he said, with white lips and mechanical utterance,--"this
night"--

"Satan is in the shed-room!" shouted the three small boys, as they held
fast to the door with a strength far beyond their age and weight.
Nevertheless, they were hardly able to cope with the strength on the
other side of the door, and it was alternately forced slightly ajar, and
then closed with a resounding slam. Once, as the firelight flickered
into the dark shed-room, the ignorant, superstitious mountaineers had a
fleeting glimpse of an object there which convinced them: they beheld
great gleaming, blazing eyes, a burnished hoof, and--yes--a flirting
tail.

"I believe it is Satan himself!" cried Ben, with awe in his voice.

In the wild confusion and bewilderment, Ben was somehow vaguely aware
that Satan had often been in the shed-room before,--in the antechamber
of his own heart. Whenever this heart of his was full of unkindness, and
hardened against his brother, although those better fraternal instincts
which he kept repressed and dwarfed might repudiate this cruelty under
the pretext that he did not really mean it, still the great principle of
evil was there in the moral shed-room, clamoring for entrance at the
inner doors. And this, we may safely say, may apply to wiser people than
poor Ben.

In the midst of the general despair and fright, something suddenly
whinnied. At the sound the three small boys fell in a limp, exhausted
heap on the floor, and, as the door no longer offered resistance, the
unknown visitor pranced in: it was the filly, snorting and tossing her
mane, and once more whinnying shrilly for her supper.

In a moment Ben understood the whole phenomenon. Thad had left the barn
door unfastened, and, when that terrible flash of lightning came and the
wind arose, the frightened animal had instantly fled to the house for
safety. She had doubtless pushed open the back door of the shed-room
easily enough, but it had closed behind her, and she had remained there
a supperless prisoner.

The small boys picked themselves up from among the filly's hoofs, with
disconnected exclamations of "Wa-a-a-l, sir!" while Ben led the animal
out, with a growing impression that he would try to "live along" fo