"'I am not big in the middle, your eyes deceive you,' said he.
"'You are lying, Mr. Constrictor,' said she, 'and I'm going to make you tell the truth. I am going to make an Incantation over and around and all about you that will give you some idea of what forces are at work in the universe.'
"Then from somewhere about her skirt, she pulled out a broomstick, and waved it five times, and said; 'Abracadabra, Pentagon' and some other things, and, of course, the performance had its effect and the Constrictor had to tell the truth. He simply had to! He admitted the consumption of the three children.
"Imagine the demeanor of the Witch when she learned that her three children had been devoured by the Constrictor! For a little time she was speechless and white in the face, then, as reason and the control of her powers returned, the malignant look which came was something that simply defies description. Her voice, as she spoke to the Constrictor this time, was shrill and raucous.
"'I am going to pronounce an Anathema upon you,' she said, 'and I'm going to do it now. I am going to make you the same at both ends.'
"A very adroit and clever Constrictor was this, and he said nothing. But he chuckled to himself: 'If she makes me the same at both ends, I will have more fun than ever. With a mouth at each end, I can eat twice as many wild boars and be twice as happy.' He coiled closer to the ground with a look of affected submission, and the Witch went on with her Anathema.
"It was a fine anathema, there was no question about it. Even the leaves on the trees about first turned brown, then crackled and then smoked, as she was making her few remarks. She completed the formula and departed, leaving the Constrictor to become the same at both ends, and he lay there, still chuckling, waiting for his double-headedness and double enjoyment in the future.
"Then came to him a sort of quivery feeling, and he knew that he was changing. It did not take more than an hour at the utmost, when that Constrictor suddenly realized that he was the same at both ends, but—he did not have two heads! He had two tails! There he was, a great Boa Constrictor, sixty feet long, with a tail at each end. Of course only one thing could happen to a Boa Constrictor with a tail at each end. He must starve to death, simply because he could not eat. Day after day passed, and the Constrictor grew less and less in dimensions, and, finally, the day came when there was only a little worm, smaller than an angle-worm. Then the day came when there was no worm at all.
"And that is the end of the story, because there isn't any more worm!"
The last sentence of the tale was concluded. Silence prevailed for a moment or two, and then there was a gasp of delight and approval from Erastus.