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My horse had been lamed in the foot / In the rocks at the back of the run, / So I camped at the Murderer's Hut, / At the place where the murder was done.
The walls were all spattered with gore, / A terrible symbol of guilt; / And the bloodstains were fresh on the floor / Where the blood of the victim was spilt.
The wind hurried past with a shout, / The thunderstorm doubled its din / As I shrank from the danger without, / And recoiled from the horror within.
When lo! at the window a shape, / A creature of infinite dread; / A thing with the face of an ape, / And with eyes like the eyes of the dead.
With the horns of a fiend, and a skin / That was hairy as satyr or elf, / And a long, pointed beard on its chin -- / My God! 'twas the Devil himself.
In anguish I sank on the floor, / With terror my features were stiff, / Till the thing gave a kind of a roar, / Ending up with a resonant "Biff!"
Then a cheer burst aloud from my throat, / For the thing that my spirit did vex / Was naught but an elderly goat / Just a goat of the masculine sex.
When his master was killed he had fled, / And now, by the dingoes bereft, / The nannies were all of them dead, / And only the billy was left.
So we had him brought in on a stage / To the house where, in style, he can strut, / And he lives to a fragrant old age / As the Ghost of the Murderer's Hut.
The Bulletin, 30 December 1893