they approached him for purposes of investigation or
acquaintance, Henderson invariably ceased from his reading long enough to
drive them away.

A life prisoner to a lifeless gaoler, life was all grey to Michael. His
moroseness changed to a deep-seated melancholy. He ceased to be
interested in life and in the freedom of life. Not that he regarded the
play of life about him with a jaundiced eye, but, rather, that his eyes
became unseeing. Debarred from life, he ignored life. He permitted
himself to become a sheer puppet slave, eating, taking his baths,
travelling in his cage, performing regularly, and sleeping much.

He had pride--the pride of the thoroughbred; the pride of the North
American Indian enslaved on the plantations of the West Indies who died
uncomplaining and unbroken. So Michael. He submitted to the cage and
the iron of the chain because they were too strong for his muscles and
teeth. He did his slave-task of performance and rendered obedience to
Jacob Henderson; but he neither loved nor feared that master. And
because of this his spirit turned in on itself. He slept much, brooded
much, and suffered unprotestingly a great loneliness. Had Henderson made
a bid for his heart, he would surely have responded; but Henderson had a
heart only for the fantastic mental gyrations of Swedenborg, and merely
made his living out of Michael.

Sometimes there were hardships. Michael accepted them. Especially hard
did he find railroad travel in winter-time, when, on occasion, fresh from
the last night's performance in a town, he remained for hours in his
crate on a truck waiting for the train that would take him to the next
town of performance. There was a night on a station platform in
Minnesota, when two dogs of a troupe, on the next truck to his, froze to
death. He was himself well frosted, and the cold bit abominably into his
shoulder wounded by the leopard; but a better constitution and better
general care of him enabled him to survive.

Compared with other show animals, he was well treated. And much of the
ill-treatment accorded other animals on the same turn with him he did not
comprehend or guess. One turn, with which he played for three months,
was a scandal amongst all vaudeville performers. Even the hardiest of
them heartily disliked the turn and the man, although Duckworth, and
Duckworth's Trained Cats and Rats, were an invariable popular success.

"Trained cats!" sniffed dainty little Pearl