Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 109: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

e: decals JAS dt ba et) Glancing about, I perceived the huge bronze blade of a battle-ax hanging, edge downward like a guillotine, over the lintel of the door I had just entered. A black stain crusted the greater part of its surface. A splintering crash! I spun around, my heart beating wildly. The cyclops stood there, grinning at me, winking that ghastly eye of his. But when 1 saw what he had done my fright gave way to swift anger. He’d smashed one of those priceless chairs to fragments! “You damned fool!” I yelled. “What did you do that for?” And, like a hen gathering in a lost chick, I fell on my knees and gathered together the pieces of the chair tenderly. The cyclops shrugged. “We'll be needin’ a fire, I reckon. We goita have firewood!” An authentic Fifteenth Century chair—firewood! I warned him to keep his hands off the furniture while I prowled about. The book lay on a huge work table near the center of the room, It was a Bible, all right—a Caxton Bible! My eyes devoured its priceless pages, my fingers infinitely tender, infinitely reverent. God! To find such a treasure in this dismal, miasmic hole, alone, uncared for! Suddenly I was aware of the crackle of flames. I glanced up—leaped to my feet with an oath. The deformed wretch had built a fire on the ancient hearth with the broken pieces of the chair! T aimed a blow at his blinking eye, but he ducked and skipped away nimbly, hissing like a frightened adder. But the flames had completely engulfed the fragments. It was too late to save them. ... The dancing flames painted, eery chiaroscuros of scarlet light and stygian shadows on the walls. I was suddenly aware how late it had grown. So engrossed had I been in the book that night had already slipped over the Devil's Millhop like a swift- flowing black melena, catching me unawares. To be forced to spend the night in this mephitic hermitage was no pleasant prospect. But the book provided consolation. I sat cross-legged on the floor near the fire, and read it slowly, critically, picking my way, as you may well imagine, with sheerest delight through its ornate typography. The cyclops sat on his haunches beside me, his glistening eye pondering the flames hungrily. How long I sat there wading through the pages of Caxton’s Bible I cannot say. Suddenly I was aware of a strange sound—a squeaking and a thrashing, as of badly greased machinery stirring to activity. Simultaneously there came a slow, crunching, grinding sound that shook the house in every rafter. It | seemed to come from directly beneath me. I leaped to my feet, scuttled to the window and peered out. The ancient mill-wheel was turning! Slowly, at first, it began to pick up speed even as I stared and soon was spinning industriously, the blinding moonlight catching the spray dancing from its paddles like spume of liquid silver. Puzzled and, I must admit, scared by this inexplicable event, [ turned to 107 , comicbooks.com