Chapter LIII
And when the last sound had gone howling by and tumbled into the bottomless pit of silence, Gud held his breath, and even Fidu ceased to breathe and listened ... and listened for the echo that was still ... and it was as quiet as the missing link, as silent as a broken heart, as mute as a withered violet in a virgin's dream.
Chapter LIV
Gud had traveled many infinite distances since he had seen any sign of matter or mind or spirits. In this region things were not merely dead! they were absolutely non-existent, and Gud became a trifle lonesome.
He was in his ghostly incognito, for he always traveled lightly in vacuous and doubtful regions. To sojourn as an immaterial spirit among material beings gives one a sense of power, for what could be more glorious than to see without eyes, hear without ears, ring bells without hands or kick over tables without feet? But it is a very dull business to journey along as a spirit in absolute nothingness.
Indeed it is a business as dull as a Latin conjugation. So Gud now realized that he was sensing something with his seventh sense, which was more acute than the canine instinct of the Underdog and almost as unerring as a woman's intuition.
This seventh sense told Gud that he had entered a spiritual realm, and he became aware of a black ghost of a white cat with one ghoulish unseeing eye, sitting on the shadow of a back fence echoing a diabolical howl.
Gud could not hear the ghost cat howl, but he knew that it was howling because with his seventh sense he felt the vibration of its howl quivering through the impalpable and ghostly ether.
The howl of the ghost cat petrified Gud's gall, for he sensed that the creature had nine notches on its tail; hence would never live again, and had nothing to howl about.