A faint smile touched the face of Rhodes.
"Don't you," he asked, "know what this is?"
"It must be the bones of a demon."
"Precisely. Grandfather Scranton, you'll remember, wounded that monster, up there by the Tamahnowis Rocks. Undoubtedly the bullet reached a vital spot, and these are that creature's bones."
"But," I objected, "these are human bones—a human skeleton with wings. According to Scranton, there was nothing at all human about the appearance of that thing which he called a demon."
"I admit," said Rhodes, "that this skeleton, at the first glance, has an appearance remarkably human—if, that is, one can forget the wings. The skull, I believe, more than anything else, contributes to that effect; and yet, at a second glance, even that loses its human semblance. For look at those terrible jaws and those terrible teeth. Who ever saw a human being with jaws and teeth like those? And look at the large scapulae and the small hips and the dwarfish, though strong, nether limbs. Batlike, Bill, strikingly so. And those feet. No toes; they are talons. And see that medial ridge on the sternum, for the attachment of the great pectoral muscles."
"A bat-man, then?" I queried.
"I should say a bat-ape."
"Or an ape-bat."
"Whichever you prefer," smiled Milton.