It was a single, sharp bark, and it stopped abruptly, as if a hand had been clapped over the animal’s mouth. I listened again, but it came no more. “What should a dog be doing here?” I thought; and full of curiosity I pushed on through the underbrush in the direction of the sound. In a moment I had broken through the tanglewood, and I was standing at the edge of a clearing, in the midst of which was a little house. It was a very tiny house indeed,--not much more, in fact, than a hut. Its door was closed, and the window beside the door was barred with shutters. I listened intently, thinking to hear again the bark of a dog, but I heard nothing. Evidently the place was deserted. I crossed the open space before the door, and as I did so I noticed, clinging to the trunk and lower branches of a tree at the side of the clearing, what appeared to be a wasp’s nest; but an enormous wasp’s nest, big enough, in all conscience, to contain a man if need be; a wasp’s nest greater than I should have thought could exist in the world. I looked at it curiously, and coming nearer I saw, crawling over it, a number of wasps. I counted them, and there were eleven. They arose with one accord and flew in great agitation about my head; and at the same time I heard a voice from inside the wasp’s nest,--the voice of a human being, but not the one I had already heard; a voice much stronger and louder. I put my ear against the wasp’s nest, and from within came these words: “Don’t speak before you’re spoken to!” “Who is it?” I said. “Where are you?” “Beware the dog!” said the voice again. “But who--what--?” I began. _The Prisoner Inside the Wasp’s Nest_ “I can’t get out! I’m imprisoned inside the wasp’s nest! Do as you’re bid, and don’t speak before you’re spoken to. Beware the dog!” At this moment I heard the click of a latch, and I turned round in time to see the door of the hut open. In the doorway was standing an old woman, and by her side a dog. She was a hideous old crone, wrinkled and bent, with little, beady eyes and a hooked nose and no teeth. She stood there munching her gums and blinking her eyes at me, and I noticed that she wore about her neck a string of what looked like ivory buttons, ten of them, white and flat. With her left hand she leaned on a crooked stick, and with her right hand she held, by a leather thong, the biggest and fiercest-looking dog I had ever seen in my life. His head came nearly to the old woman’s shoulder. He was chocolate brown in color, and his skin was entirely naked of hair, except for a patch of long wiry hair which fringed his neck. He bared his sharp, white teeth at me and growled. I felt decidedly uneasy.