He said several men who
had thus passed the night with him had seen this hand. 'But,' added
he, 'it's lucky you didn't have the big black dogs also.' Tableau!
"I was to have slept again with him next night to look further into
the matter, but a friend of his came from --- that day, so I could not
renew the experiment, as I had fully determined to do. By-the-bye, I
was troubled for months after by the same feeling that the clothes
were being pulled off the bed.
"And that's the yarn of the Black Dogs and the Thumbless Hand."
"I think," said I, "that you did no harm in telling Bolter's young
woman."
"I never thought of it when I told her, or of her interest in the
kennel; but, by George, she soon broke off her engagement."
"Did you know Manning, the Pakeha Maori, the fellow who wrote Old New
Zealand?"
"No, what about him?"
"He did not put it in his book, but he told the same yarn, without the
dogs, as having happened to himself. He saw the whole arm, and _the
hand was leprous_."
"Ugh!" said the Beach-comber.
"Next morning he was obliged to view the body of an old Maori, who had
been murdered in his garden the night before.
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