s and excursions by parties
unknown were taking place, and suggested that attention might well be
paid. Duke opened one drowsy eye. What that eye beheld was monstrous.

Here was a strange experience--the horrific vision in the midst of
things so accustomed. Sunshine fell sweetly upon porch and backyard;
yonder was the familiar stable, and from its interior came the busy hum
of a carpenter shop, established that morning by Duke's young master,
in association with Samuel Williams and Herman. Here, close by, were
the quiet refuse-can and the wonted brooms and mops leaning against the
latticed wall at the end of the porch, and there, by the foot of the
steps, was the stone slab of the cistern, with the iron cover displaced
and lying beside the round opening, where the carpenters had left it,
not half an hour ago, after lowering a stick of wood into the water, "to
season it". All about Duke were these usual and reassuring environs of
his daily life, and yet it was his fate to behold, right in the midst of
them, and in ghastly juxtaposition to his face, a thing of nightmare and
lunacy.

Gipsy had seized the fishbone by the middle. Out from one side of his
head, and mingling with his whiskers, projected the long, spiked spine
of the big fish; down from the other side of that ferocious head dangled
the fish's tail, and from above the remarkable effect thus produced shot
the intolerable glare of two yellow eyes. To the gaze of Duke, still
blurred by slumber, this monstrosity was all of one piece the bone
seemed a living part of it. What he saw was like those interesting
insect-faces that the magnifying glass reveals to great M. Fabre. It
was impossible for Duke to maintain the philosophic calm of M. Fabre,
however; there was no magnifying glass between him and this spined and
spiky face. Indeed, Duke was not in a position to think the matter over
quietly. If he had been able to do that, he would have said to himself:
"We have here an animal of most peculiar and unattractive appearance,
though, upon examination, it seems to be only a cat stealing a fishbone.
Nevertheless, as the thief is large beyond all my recollection of cats
and has an unpleasant stare, I will leave this spot at once."

On the contrary, Duke was so electrified by his horrid awakening that he
completely lost his presence of mind. In the very instant of his first
eye's opening, the other eye and his mouth behaved similarly, the latter
loosing upon the quiet ai