And so they waited in the uncouth room in the solemn watches of the night, pricking up their ears at a rare footstep in the street, and hastening to peep out of the window; waiting for the knock that came not, and the dawn that was distant. The silence lay upon them like a pall.
Suddenly, in the weird stillness, they heard a fluttering and a skurrying, and, looking up, they saw a great white thing floating through the room. Flutter-Duck uttered a terrible cry. "Hear, O Israel!" she shrieked.
"Nee, nee," said Lewis reassuringly, though scarcely less startled. "It is only the tripha goose got loose."
"Nay, nay, it is the Devil!" hoarsely whispered Flutter-Duck, who had covered her face with her hands, and was shaking as with palsy.
Her terror communicated itself to her husband. "Hush, hush! Talk not so," he said, shivering with indefinable awe.
"Say psalms, say psalms!" panted Flutter-Duck. "Drive him out."
Lewis opened the window, but the unclean bird showed no desire to flit. It was evidently the Not-Good-One himself.
"Hear, O Israel!" wailed Flutter-Duck. "Since he came in this morning everything has been upside down."
The goose chuckled.
Lewis was seized with a fell terror that gave him a mad courage. Murmuring a holy phrase, he grabbed at the goose, which eluded him, and fluttered flappingly hither and thither. Lewis gave chase, his lips praying mechanically. At last he caught it by a wing, haled it, hissing and struggling and uttering rasping cries, to the window, flung it without, and closed the sash with a bang. Then he fell impotent against the work-table, and spat out a mouthful of blood.