hare grew
larger and blacker as it went; and the young man presently saw that he
was in a country that he knew not; it was all barren and desolate round
him, and the sky grew dark. Then he spurred his horse more furiously, and
he drew nearer and nearer to the great hare that now skipped along like a
stag before him; and then, as he put out his hand to cut the hare down,
the creature sprang into the air and vanished, and the horse fell dead;
and the man was found in his own meadow by his friends, in a swound, with
his horse dead beside him, and trampled marks round and round the field,
and the pug-marks of what seemed like a great tiger beside him, where the
beast had sprung into the air."

When Mr. Brian found that Anthony was interested in such stories, he told
him plenty of them; especially tales that seemed to join in a strange
unity of life, demons, beasts and men. It was partly, no doubt, his
studies as a naturalist that led him to insist upon points that united
rather than divided the orders of creation; and he told him stories first
from such writers as Michael Verdunus and Petrus Burgottus, who relate
among other marvels how there are ointments by the use of which shepherds
have been known to change themselves into wolves and tear the sheep that
they should have protected; and he quoted to him St. Augustine's own
testimony, to the belief that in Italy certain women were able to change
themselves into heifers through the power of witchcraft. Finally, he told
him one or two tales of his own experience.

"In the year '63," he said, "before my marriage, I was living alone in
the Hall; I was a young man, and did my best to fear nought but deadly
sin. I was coming back late from Threlkeld, round the south of Skiddaw
that you see over there; and was going with a lantern, for it would be
ten o'clock at night, and the time of year was autumn. I was still a mile
or two from the house, and was saying my beads as I came, for I hold that
is a great protection; when I heard a strange whistling noise, with a
murmur in it, high up overhead in the night. 'It is the birds going
south,' I said to myself, for you know that great flocks fly by night
when the cold begins to set in; but the sound grew louder and more
distinct, and at last I could hear the sound as of words gabbled in a
foreign tongue; and I knew they were no birds, though maybe they had
wings like them. But I knew that a Christened soul in grace has nought to
fear f