I turned my head resolutely away, and scanned the ground about me. As my eyes travelled along the thorny hedge that circled the place, I saw something that gleamed through the green, half hidden by the underbrush. Idly I looked, but the next instant my pulse quickened; for as I gazed, the horrid meaning of the thing leaped to my mind. I had seen the white bones of a mouldering human skeleton.
I set my teeth lest any sound escape me, and some watchful priest staying behind his fellows to gloat over my misery, hear my cry and so have joy over my weakness.
The sun went down, and night fell. A wind arose, and it blew from the silent hut to me, and I smelled the breath of the charnel house, and my stomach turned within me.
But the stars came out, and the moon rode in the sky; a full moon, round and glorious.
Then the curtain of grass was pushed aside, and the Thing that dwelt within leaped into the circle. It was white, with a loathsome whiteness, naked, and painted with spots of red and blue, and it mowed and mumbled and danced uncouthly there in the moonlight.
I watched it with a thick sense of impending horror. It flung its arms wildly about its head and laughed shrilly at its own fantastic shadow.
It rolled over and over on the ground and stretched its limbs in content, while the moonlight bathed them, just as a beast will stretch out comfortably in the warm sunshine.
I moved a little on my bed of stone, and again the rings of the altar rattled.
Then the Thing raised its head, and its eyes rested on me with a look of greed and cunning.
It stopped its hideous play and began to crawl warily but surely towards me.