The Giants’ Dance. Robert Goldthwaite Carter

his cloak to cover his shirt’s whiteness, and crept along the passageway. He moved carefully down the stair, pausing only to take up the balk of wood that barred the door, and went out into the slanting moonlight. No sooner had he stepped outside, than he heard a scream. It was Willow. Then Bethe began to cry.

      ‘Hoy!’ he shouted as he reached the place below the window. There, up on the thatch and scraping at the shutter, was a goggly.

      So they are child-stealers after all, Will thought. It’s after Bethe! But it hasn’t reckoned on the spells of protection that Gwydion’s put on the Plough! That must have been what woke me up.

      ‘You! Get away from there!’

      The thing was fighting to open the shutters, and now it was hissing and scratching like a mad thing, then it slid down a little among the hard moonlight shadows and began to tear at the thatch.