d limb.

"Oh, do shoot, and have done with it," whispered Hazel, shuddering
violently.

"Hold on, Greenoak. Don't blaze yet," said Dick Selmes, who had not
heard. "I want to have a closer look."

"Better not," warned Harley Greenoak, who had already got his quarry
covered. "He might break loose, or the chain might give,"--the trap was
chained to a tree.

But the other laughed recklessly, and continued to advance--we dare not
swear that the consciousness of having a certain form of gallery to play
to did not add to his rashness. He halted within very few yards of the
maddened beast.

The latter was now frightful to behold. He seemed to flatten himself
lower in his crouch. The great speckled head literally opened, until,
viewed in section, it resembled a crescent. The lips were drawn back
from the formidable fangs till the contracted folds of the skin
well-nigh closed the glaring eyes, and the infuriated snarl had become
something terrific.

Suddenly every muscle in the beast's body was seen to stiffen. With an
appalling yell it flung itself forward. Dick Selmes was hurled to the
ground, half stunned; his confused senses feebly conscious of the crash
of a report, leading him to suppose he had been shot by accident.

"Well of all the complete young idiots I ever saw, you _are_ the
champion one," cried old Hesketh, with excusable heat, having
ascertained that his guest was uninjured. The latter laughed, rather
feebly, for he felt sore all over.

"What's the row, eh? Greenoak, I thought you'd shot me."

"The row? Look there," was the answer grimly given.

Dick screwed himself round. There lay the iron trap--empty, and further
on, the spotted corpse of the great leopard. He himself was _between
the two_.

"Lucky Greenoak's got the eye of a hawk, and the quickness of a flash of
lightning," said his host, grimly. "I know _I_ could never have got in
that shot in time. How would you be feeling now if the brute's spring
hadn't been cut short? He was stone dead in the middle of it when he
knocked you over."

"Did he knock me over then?" said Dick, rising to his feet.

"Rather," answered Greenoak. "Even then the muscular contraction of his
claws might have given you fits; but he made a bad shot--only hit you
with his shoulder and knocked you flying."

They gathered round the splendid beast, grim and terrible still in
death. The heavy Express bullet had gone clean through the heart.

"By George,