Beware The Beasts Read Online Free Page A

kind. When he put down the telephone he was convinced that he had better plan to give an entire series of lectures upon the evil effects of superstition. If he had been irritated by the curious, stolid refusal of his parish workmen to assist at the opening of the tomb, he was even more disquieted and angered by the persistent stupidity of a man like old Hether, who ought to be about setting a good example rather than upholding the error of these country ways. The vicar, clearly, was from the city; he had come out of White-chapel, which was not a savory environment. Having seen a good deal of the rawer side of life, he had a natural tendency to be irate about those needless beliefs which always work to make the lot of a poor yokelry more difficult.
    When he put out the light and went to bed, the vicar's mind was occupied with sonorous and rather pompous lines deriding the folly of superstition.
    He was awakened in the night by what he thought at first was rain against the window pane; but, as he came more fully to his senses, he recognized it as a snuffling sound - the kind of sound an animal might make. At the same time he was conscious of a veritable bedlam in the village; it seemed to him that every dog in the countryside was barking furiously, madly, as if something frightened or angered them. He turned over on his side and listened intently; the snuffling sound was repeated.
    It was manifestly ridiculous that any kind of animal could be snuffling at his window. The vicar slept on the second floor, and the walls went straight down to the ground, with not even a vine up which something might crawl, much less the roof of a verandah. Yet, there it was, a peculiar, persistent snuffling, accompanied from time to time by an oddly muted whine or growl, and set all the time against that wild barking in the background. He got up at last, irritated, and went over to the window.
    The window looked out upon the lane and the corner streetlight. Almost the first thing he saw was a man standing there; he stood a little in the shadow, and yet his face was clearly visible - a long, dark, saturnine face, with dark pools for eyes, not exactly a young man, and yet not seeming old except in the curious parchment-like quality of his gaunt features. It was not someone the vicar knew.
    While he stood looking, the vicar observed that the stranger under the light was not alone; a large dog bounded out of the vicarage yard and came quietly to his side. It seemed to the vicar with a curious kind of thrill that man and dog both turned and looked for a moment intently at the window from which he peered outward before they turned and vanished in the dark direction of the churchyard.
    "What a strange thing!" murmured the vicar.
    He stood there a little longer and was conscious presently that the bedlam of barking had ceased. It did not occur to him that the barking had stopped in approximately the time it would have taken the watcher and his dog to reach the churchyard. In some respects, the vicar was unimaginative; if he had thought enough of old Hether to give him a ring on the telephone, he might have spared himself certain unpleasant experiences.
    It was maddening, but from that evening, everything seemed to go wrong. The bishop took him to task for opening the tomb without first investigating every other avenue of raising money and without having the parish convinced of the right to open it. "A form of desecration all the more to be deprecated since it was done purely for material gain," wrote the bishop. There went the Reverend Mr. Webly's chance for immediate advancement. Before noon, his gardener quit, coming into the study and putting his case very stolidly.
    "Seein' as how the dogs do bark, and you know what that means, Reverend Zur."
    "Why, no, what does it mean?" demanded the vicar truculently.
    "Strange dogs about, there be, zur."
    "Indeed!"
    The vicar paid him and sent him off, not without rancor. It was being borne in upon him painfully