The very
walls appeared to open to him like a refuge, to enfold themselves around him
with friendly strength and understanding.
He sat at the upper end of the room, gazing blankly through the doorway at
the gray light and clouds of white mist trailing. Once an object came into
the field of his vision. At the first glimpse he thought it a dog--long,
lean, skulking, prowling, tawny--on the scent of his tracks. Then the mist
passed over it. When he beheld it again it had approached nearer and was
creeping rapidly toward the door. His listless eyes grew fascinated by its
motions--its litheness, suppleness, grace, stealth, exquisite caution. Never
before had he seen a dog with the step of a cat. A second time the fog
closed over it, and then, advancing right out of the cloud with more
swiftness, more cunning, its large feet falling as lightly as flakes of
snow, the weight of its huge body borne forward as noiselessly as the
trailing mist, it came straight on. It reached the hickory block, which
formed the doorstep; it paused there an instant, with its fore quarters in
the doorway, one fore foot raised, the end of its long tail waving; and then
it stole just over the threshold and crouched, its head pressed down until
its long, whitish throat lay on the floor; its short, jagged ears set
forward stiffly like the broken points of a javelin; its dilated eye blazing
with steady green fire--as still as death.
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