But it was different here.  And presently, when it seemed nearly dark except for the stars, a disgraceful thing happened.  He had pictured the dog as faithful always to him, refusing in the end even to be taken from over his dead body.  But the treacherous Penny grew first restive, then plainly desirous of returning to his home.  At last, after many efforts to corrupt the adventurer, he started off briskly alone—­cornerwise, as little dogs seem always to run—­fleeing shamelessly toward that east where shone the tame lights of Virtue.

Left alone, the little boy began strangely to remember certain phrases from a tract that Clytie had tried to teach him—­“the moment that will close thy life on earth and begin thy song in heaven or thy wail in hell”—­“impossible to go from the haunts of sin and vice to the presence of the Lamb”—­“the torments of an eternal hell are awaiting thee”—­

  “To-night may be thy latest breath,
    Thy little moment here be done. 
  Eternal woe, the second death,
    Awaits the Christ-rejecting one.”

This was more than he had ever before been able to recall of such matters.  He wished that he might have forgotten them wholly.  Yet so was he turned again to better things.  Gradually he began to have an inkling of a possibility that made his blood icy—­a possibility that not even the spectacle of Milo Barrus having interesting things done to him could mitigate—­namely, a vision of himself in the same plight with that person.

Now it was that he began to hear Them all about him.  They walked stealthily near, passed him with sinister rustlings, and whispered over him.  If They had only talked out—­but they whispered—­even laughing, crying and singing in whispers.  This horror, of course, was not long to be endured.  Yet, even so, with increasing myriads of Them all about, rustling and whispering their awful laughs and cries—­it was no ignominious rout.  With considerable deliberation he folded the carpet, placed it in the box with his other treasure, and started at a pace which may, perhaps, have quickened a little, yet was never undignified—­never more than a moderately fast trudge.

He wondered sadly if Clytie would get up to unlock the door for him so late at night.  As for Penny, things could never be the same between them again.

He was astounded to see lights burning and the house open—­how weird for them to have supper at such an hour!  He concealed his box in the grape-arbour and slunk through the kitchen into the dining-room.  Probably they had gotten up in the middle of the night, out of tardy alarm for him.  It served them right.  Yet they seemed hardly to notice him when he slid awkwardly into his chair.  He looked calculatingly over the table and asked, in tones that somehow seemed to tell of injury, of personal affront: 

“What you having supper for at this time of night?”

His grandfather regarded him now not unkindly, while Clytie seemed confused.