Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

=. ¥ ae EE me PTL eae te aud Gr hat Ls : TS dre a Sh i ‘(eal ae Fi te Le Ae to - THE MAN WITH A THOUSAND LEGS | 63° = know just what,, but my curiosity was aroused. “That light isn’t for nothing,” I phoebe “This box means business.” I began to andes what would happen if something alive were put on the slide. There was a clump of bushes near where I was sitting and I got up and made for it. It took me some time to get what I was after; but when I caught it I held it firmly between my thumb and forefinger so it couldn’t escape, and then I talked to it. “Grasshopper,” I said. “I haven’t any grudge against you personally, but the scientific mind is no respecter of persons.” The infernal varmint wriggled and wriggled and covered my thumb with molasses, but I didn’t let up on him. I held him firmly and pushed him onto the slide. Then I turned on the lever and peeped through the holes. The poor devil squirmed and fluttered for several minutes and then he began to dissolve. He got flabbier and flabbier and soon I could see right through him, When he was nothing but ooze he began to wriggle. I dumped him on the ground and he scurried away faster than a centipede. “Tm deluding myself,” I thought. “I’m seeing things that never happened.” Then I did a very foolish thing. I thrust my hand into the box and tufned on the lever. For several moments nothing happened and then my hand began — to get cold. I peeped through the holes and what I saw made me scream and scream and draw my hand out and go running about the lot like a madman. My hand was a mass of writhing, twisting snakes! Leastwise, they looked like - snakes at first, but later I saw that they were soft and yellow and rubbery and much worse than snakes. But even then I didn’t altogether lose my head. Lcaatyicel I didn’t lose it for long. “This is a sheer hallucination,” I said to myself, “and I’m going - to. argue myself out of it.’ I sat down on a big boulder and held my hand up and looked at it. It had a thousand fingers and they dripped, but I made myself look at ’em. I did some tall arguing. “Snap out of it,” I said. “You’re imagining things!” I - thouaie the fingers began to shorten and stiffen a little. “You’re imagining all this,” I continued. “It’s the sheerest bunk. That box isn’t anything out of - the ordinary! : Well sir, you may not believe it, but I argued myself back into sanity. 1 argued my hand back to normal. The wriggling, twisting things got shorter ng and fatter and joined together and before very long I had a hand with fingers. “Then I stood up and shouted. Luckily no one heard me, and there wasn’t — ‘o anyone to watch me dancing about on my toes either. When I got out of breath I Picked the infernal box up and walked away with it. I made directly i for the river. ““You’ve had your day,” I said. “You won’t turn any more poor __ 4 critters into jelly-fish!”. ‘con fe) eee Pe > Fad > 7 Ae - “. GF a er | Seer s "2 x ~ e z 4