playmate.

Almost at the same time the mortality among the livestock commenced. Poultry turned greyish and died very quickly, their meat being found dry and noisome upon cutting. Hogs grew inordinately fat, then suddenly began to undergo loathsome changes which no one could explain. Their meat was of course useless, and Nahum was at his wit's end. No rural veterinary would approach his place, and the city veterinary from Arkham was openly baffled. The swine began growing grey and brittle and falling to pieces before they died, and their eyes and muzzles developed singular alterations. It was very inexplicable, for they had never been fed from the tainted vegetation. Then something struck the cows. Certain areas or sometimes the whole body would be uncannily shrivelled or compressed, and atrocious collapses or disintegrations were common. In the last stages--and death was always the result--there would be a greying and turning brittle like that which beset the hogs. There could be no question of poison, for all the cases occurred in a locked and undisturbed barn. No bites of prowling things could have brought the virus, for what live beast of earth can pass through solid obstacles? It must be only natural disease--yet what disease could wreak such results was beyond any mind's guessing. When the harvest came there was not an animal surviving on the place, for the stock and poultry were dead and the dogs had run away. These dogs, three in number, had all vanished one night and were never heard of again. The five cats had left some time before, but their going was scarcely noticed since there now seemed to be no mice, and only Mrs. Gardner had made pets of the graceful felines.On the nineteenth of October Nahum staggered into Ammi's house with
hideous news. The death had come to poor Thaddeus in his attic room,
and it had come in a way which could not be told. Nahum had dug a grave
in the railed family plot behind the farm, and had put therein what
he found. There could have been nothing from outside, for the small
barred window and locked door were intact; but it was much as it had
been in the barn. Ammi and his wife consoled the stricken man as best
they could, but shuddered as they did so. Stark terror seemed to cling
round the Gardners and all they touched, and the very presence of one
in the house was a breath from regions unnamed and unnameable. Ammi
accompanied Nahum home with the greatest reluctance, and did what he
might to calm the hysterical sobbing of little Merwin. Zenas needed no
calming. He had come of late to do nothing but stare into space and
obey what his father told him; and Ammi thought that his fate was very
merciful. Now and then Merwin's screams were answered faintly from the

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