It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, as made my way through the village, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.
The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody-else's pork pie! Stop him!" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Holloa, young thief!" One black ox, with a white cravat on - who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air - fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail.
All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him regularly bound, we would have such Larks there!
I had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw an immense figure some ways before me. Its back was towards me, and I could see that its skin was covered in ragged gray fur, torn and stretched thin over a great protruding spine. The creature looked a vile, sickly thing and hunched forward, as if it bore a great stone round its neck. I locked every muscle into place and stood exquisitely still, as I watched my first Howl Beast vanish into the opaque fog, a pronounced limp in its right leg.
My eyes rolled upward in their sockets – the night’s moon had already set. It was as the man said! Here, the Howl Beast had stood before me in the gray dawn, mocking the moonless sky with his very existence. This revelation, now planted, began to grow and sprout unthinkable questions, the answers to which had heretofore seemed settled. I wanted to fly home and relate to Joe what I had witnessed, but my fear - both of the man waiting in the sopping marshes and of Mrs. Joe waiting by her burgled pantry - had got the better of my curiosity.
