urned them all out,
shut the door, and turned in again myself. Of course my idea was that
they were flesh and blood, and I allude to physical fear.

"I slept, but was anew awakened by a ghastly feeling that the blanket
was being dragged and creeping off the bed. I pulled it up again, but
anew began the slow movement of descent.

"Rather surprised, I pulled it up afresh and held it, and must have
dozed off, as I suppose. Awoke, to feel it being pulled again; it was
slipping, slipping, and then with a sudden, violent jerk it was thrown
on the floor. Il faut dire that during all this I had glanced several
times at Bolter, who seemed profoundly asleep. But now alarmed I
tried to wake him. In vain, he slept like the dead; his face, always
a pasty white, now like marble in the moonlight. After some
hesitation I put the blanket back on the bed and held it fast. The
pulling at once began and increased in strength, and I, by this time
thoroughly alarmed, put all my strength against it, and hung on like
grim death.

"To get a better hold I had taken a turn over my head (or perhaps
simply to hide), when suddenly I felt a pressure outside on my body,
and a movement like fingers--they gradually approached my head. Mad
with fear I chucked off the blanket, grasped a Hand, gazed on it for
one moment in silent horror, and threw it away! No wonder, it was
attached to no arm or body, it was hairy and dark coloured, the
fingers were short, blunt, with long, claw-like nails, and it was
minus a thumb! Too frightened to get up I had to stop in bed, and, I
suppose, fell to sleep again, after fresh vain attempts to awaken
Bolter. Next morning I told him about it. He said several men who
had thus passed the night with him had seen this hand. 'But,' added
he, 'it's lucky you didn't have the big black dogs also.' Tableau!

"I was to have slept again with him next night to look further into
the matter, but a friend of his came from --- that day, so I could not
renew the experiment, as I had fully determined to do. By-the-bye, I
was troubled for months after by the same feeling that the clothes
were being pulled off the bed.

"And that's the yarn of the Black Dogs and the Thumbless Hand."

"I think," said I, "that you did no harm in telling Bolter's young
woman."

"I never thought of it when I told her, or of her interest in the
kennel; but, by George, she soon broke off her engagement."

"Did you know Manning, the Pakeha M