Their glances met; Gaspard's eyes glistened in the moonlight. That meeting of glances was but for an instant. The next, Gaspard clapped his hands to the pit of his stomach, and bending over, writhed and twisted and doubled himself in a convulsion of silent, crazy laughter. After a while he straightened himself again, and as Oliver gazed, fascinated, he suddenly began an uncouth, grotesque dance. Around and around he spun, hopping and bobbing up and down; around, around, with his black shadow—pot-bellied, long-limbed, and spider-like—hopping beneath him. So hopping and bobbing, with wagging head and writhing, twisting limbs, he drew nearer and nearer to the door. Another leap, and he had hopped into the house, and the street was silent and deserted once more in the white moonlight.
For a while Oliver continued leaning out of the window, dazed, bewildered with what he had seen. Then he slowly drew his head in again, and with trembling limbs and quaking body crawled back to his blankets that lay in a heap upon the floor in the darkness. He heard a distant clock strike two; he would have given ten years of his life for a ray of good, honest sunlight.
The Morning.
"Did the cats annoy you last night?" said Oliver's mother, as they sat at breakfast.
"No," said the new uncle. Gaspard and he looked as if they had never opened their eyes the whole night through.
Oliver sat with the untasted breakfast before him, heavily burdened with the recollection of what he had seen. For one moment he woke to the question and answer, and wondered vaguely whether the little supper of the night before had given him the nightmare. Then his heart sank back, heavier than ever, for he knew that what he had seen he had seen with his waking eyes.
Suddenly the new uncle looked up. "We will start for Paris," said he, "at nine o'clock."
Oliver's heart thrilled at the words. It was on his tongue to say, "I do not want to go to Paris," but Gaspard's mouse-like eyes were fixed upon him, and he gulped, shuddered, and sat silent.
