"I don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time."

Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grappling
with a problem that was eluding him.

"What do you feed on?" he asked.

"Flesh," said the boy, and he pronounced the word with slow relish,
as though he were tasting it.

"Flesh! What Flesh?"

"Since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, poultry, lambs
in their season, children when I can get any; they're usually too
well locked in at night, when I do most of my hunting. It's quite
two months since I tasted child-flesh."

Ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark Van Cheele tried to
draw the boy on the subject of possible poaching operations.

"You're talking rather through your hat when you speak of feeding on
hares." (Considering the nature of the boy's toilet the simile was
hardly an apt one.) "Our hillside hares aren't easily caught."

"At night I hunt on four feet," was the somewhat cryptic response.

"I suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?" hazarded Van Cheele.

The boy rolled slowly over on to his back, and laughed a weird low
laugh, that was pleasantly like a chuckle and disagreeably like a