Another would
have fetched iron bars and clamped them across the street, remembering
the earthquake there was in the street of the shearers. Another would
have honoured his household gods, the little cat-faced idols seated
above his hearth, gods to whom magic was no unusual thing, and, having
paid their fees and honoured them well, would have put the whole case
before them. His scheme found favour with many, and yet at last was
rejected, for others ran indoors and brought out their gods, too, to
be honoured, till there was a herd of gods all seated there on the
pavement; yet would they have honoured them and put their case before
them but that a fat man ran up last of all, carefully holding under a
reverent arm his own two hound-faced gods, though he knew well--as,
indeed, all men must--that they were notoriously at war with the
little cat-faced idols. And although the animosities natural to faith
had all been lulled by the crisis, yet a look of anger had come into
the cat-like faces that no one dared disregard, and all perceived that
if they stayed a moment longer there would be flaming around them the
jealousy of the gods; so each man hastily took his idols home, leaving
the fat man insisting that his hound-faced gods should be honoured.

Then there were schemes again and voices raised in debate, and many
new dangers feared and new plans made.

But in the end they made no defence against danger, for they knew not
what it would be, but wrote upon parchment as a warning, and in order
that all might know: "_The bad old woman in black ran down the street
of the ox-butchers._"

The Bird of the Difficult Eye

Observant men and women that know their Bond Street well will
appreciate my astonishment when in a jewellers' shop I perceived that
nobody was furtively watching me. Not only this but when I even picked
up a little carved crystal to examine it no shop-assistants crowded
round me. I walked the whole length of the shop, still no one politely
followed.

Seeing from this that some extraordinary revolution had occurred in
the jewelry business I went with my curiosity well aroused to a queer
old person half demon and half man who has an idol-shop in a byway of
the City and who keeps me informed of affairs at the Edge of the
World. And briefly over a pinch of heather incense that he takes by
way of snuff he gave me this tremendous information: that Mr. Neepy
Thang the son of Thangobrind had returned from the Edg