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22 PHANTASTES: |
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Here a low hurried cry from my hostess caused me to look up from the book, and I read no more.
" Look there!" she said; " look at his fingers !"
Just as I had been reading in the book, the setting sun was shining through a cleft in the clouds piled up in the west; and a shadow as of a large distorted hand, with thick knobs and humps on the fingers, so that it was much wider across the fingers than across the undivided part of the hand, passed slowly over the little blind, and then as slowly returned in the opposite direction.
c He is almost awake, mother; and greedier than usual to-night."
" Hush, child; you need not make him more angry with us than he is; for you do not know how soon something may happen to oblige us to be in the forest after nightfall."
€c But you are in the forest," said I; " how is it that you are safe here ? "
"He dares not come nearer than he is now," she replied; " for any of those four oaks, at the corners of our cottage, would tear him to pieces: they are our friends. But he stands there and makes awful faces at us sometimes, and stretches out his long arms and fingers, and tries to kill us |
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