raught with a face of glad astonishment. Then she led away the
smallest, and the rest went trooping after her. With her own gentle
hands, they told me, she put them to bed on the floor of the garret.

CHAPTER XXXIX. THAT NIGHT

Their night was a troubled one, and they brought a strange report of
it into the day. Whether the fear of their sleep came out into their
waking, or their waking fear sank with them into their dreams, awake or
asleep they were never at rest from it. All night something seemed going
on in the house--something silent, something terrible, something they
were not to know. Never a sound awoke; the darkness was one with the
silence, and the silence was the terror.

Once, a frightful wind filled the house, and shook its inside, they
said, so that it quivered and trembled like a horse shaking himself;
but it was a silent wind that made not even a moan in their chamber, and
passed away like a soundless sob.

They fell asleep. But they woke again with a great start. They thought
the house was filling with water such as they had been drinking. It came
from below, and swelled up until the garret was full of it to the very
roof. But it made no more sound than the wind, and when it sank away,
they fell asleep dry and warm.

The next time they woke, all the air, they said, inside and out, was
full of cats. They swarmed--up and down, along and across, everywhere
about the room. They felt their claws trying to get through the
night-gowns lady Mara had put on them, but they could not; and in the
morning not one of them had a scratch. Through the dark suddenly, came
the only sound they heard the night long--the far-off howl of the huge
great-grandmother-cat in the desert: she must have been calling her
little ones, they thought, for that instant the cats stopped, and all
was still. Once more they fell fast asleep, and did not wake till the
sun was rising.

Such was the account the children gave of their experiences. But I was
with the veiled woman and the princess all through the night: something
of what took place I saw; much I only felt; and there was more which eye
could not see, and heart only could in a measure understand.

As soon as Mara left the room with the children, my eyes fell on the
white leopardess: I thought we had left her behind us, but there she
was, cowering in a corner. Apparently she was in mortal terror of what
she might see. A lamp stood on the high chimney-piece, and sometimes