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Rh fearing almost to breathe, he watched a spider suck blood from a captured fly, while the wretched victim struggled and buzzed in the spider's claws. Finally the tragedy was brought to an end by the boy slaying both torturer and tortured. Next, he repaired to the moat to search for sundry small roots which he knew of; which found, he peeled them, and then devoured the same with relish, in the make-believe that they were the apples and preserves which his mamma was accustomed to give him. This item exhausted, he hied him through the entrance gates—his object in so doing being to reach a birch copse which looked to him so close at hand that, should he take the direct route, and not the circuitous high-road (that is to say, should he walk straight across the moat, and through the osier plantation), he would be able to attain his goal in five minutes. But, alas! he felt afraid, for he had heard tales of wood goblins, of brigands, and of fearsome wild beasts. Next, the spirit moved him to make for the ravine, which lay a hundred paces from the garden; so, running to the edge of the declivity, and puckering his eyes, he gazed into its depths as into Vulcan's crater. Suddenly to: his mind recurred all the tales and traditions