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the aroma of it was about to drive me . . .
    The Voice That Chills came again from the other room.
    â€œLoper, wake up.”
    â€œUuuuuu.”
    â€œLoper, somebody is in this house.”
    â€œUuuuuuu a;ckeit cl0e89dskcgh slckbnbedn—3um.”
    â€œLoper, wake up!”
    â€œHuh? What?”
    â€œI heard a sound in the kitchen.”
    â€œI’ll be derned.”
    â€œWould you like to go check it out?”
    â€œNope.” Silence. “Ouch! Those are my ribs.”
    â€œDear, please.”
    â€œOkay, okay. Okay.” The bed squeaked. Foot­steps on the floor. “Okay. Kitchen. All you people in the kitchen stand at attention. Here I come.”
    He was coming. That was pretty serious but not nearly as serious as if Sally May Herself had come. Somehow the thought of getting murdered by Loper didn’t terrify me as much.
    Still, we had to do something. I glanced at Alfred. He looked rather pale, seemed to me, and scared beyond recognition. The sound of bare feet moving across the floor filled the dreadful silence. They were coming our way.
    The feet, that is. Loper was coming our way too, walking on his . . . you get the idea.
    I was still watching Alfred, waiting for him to give us a sign. Son, do something. Don’t just stand there. Several lives are at stake here.
    The footsteps were coming closer and closer. My heart was pounding. The boy was frozen in his tracks. I was so scared that I could no longer smell that wonderful bacon draped over my snout. That’s pretty scared.
    Footsteps in the darkness.
    The rumble of thunder outside.
    Hearts racing and pounding.
    Then . . .

Chapter Seven: Inside the Coverous Cavern

    A t last he made his move, and not a second too late. Too soon, I guess it ought to be. He made his so-forth not a second too soon.
    He darted through the nearest doorway and into his bedroom, which lay just to the south of the kitchen. That was a piece of good luck for us, that his room was close by.
    Alfred didn’t say a word to me or Drover about following him, but then again, he didn’t need to say a word. I was ready to get out of there.
    On silent paws that made not a sound, I brushed past Drover and whispered, “You stole my bacon, you little creep.”
    We whisked ourselves through the door and into Alfred’s room. The boy oozed himself into his bed and, well, I guess he wanted us to crawl UNDER the bed, but in the excitement and confusion of the . . .
    We jumped into bed with him, is more or less what we did, and went slithering beneath the covers, straight to the bottom. See, I’m not fond of the underneath-side of beds. Too many spiders.
    And dust. Drover has allergies, don’t forget, and the last thing we needed was for him to go into a fit of sneezing.
    But back to the spider deal, I’m no chicken liver but I don’t get along with spiders. Don’t laugh. We have a variety of spiders in this country called the Brown Fiddlebow and they’re nothing to play around with.
    They bite, don’t you see, and they don’t rattle or hiss before they bite. Rattlesnakes are bad enough but at least they give you some warning. Those spiders merely bite, and I’ve heard stories about what happens.
    Your legs rot away. Your tail falls off. Your ears turn brown like autumn leaves and then they fall off too.
    You want to crawl under a bed with a nest of Brown Fiddlebow spiders? Neither did I, and if Little Alfred didn’t want two wet dogs under the covers with him, that was, as we say, too bad.
    And besides the spiders and so forth, I like soft beds.
    So there we were, under the covers and at the bottom of the bed, with Little Alfred’s feet sticking in our faces. It was then and there, in the silence and in the darkness, that I came to a terrible realization.
    â€œDrover,” I whispered, “I’ve lost my bacon.”
    â€œOh darn.”
    â€œAnd if you find it before I do, I would appreciate