the delight of men.

Mulcachy had originated aphorisms of his own which he continually
enunciated, among which were:

"Take it from me, when an animal won't give way to pain, it can't be
broke. Pain is the only school-teacher."

"Just as you got to take the buck out of a broncho, you've got to take
the bite out of a lion."

"You can't break animals with a feather duster. The thicker the skull
the thicker the crowbar."

"They'll always beat you in argument. First thing is to club the
argument out of them."

"Heart-bonds between trainers and animals! Son, that's dope for the
newspaper interviewer. The only heart-bond I know is a stout stick with
some iron on the end of it."

"Sure you can make 'm eat outa your hand. But the thing to watch out for
is that they don't eat your hand. A blank cartridge in the nose just
about that time is the best preventive I know."

There were days when all the air was vexed with roars and squalls of
ferocity and agony from the arena, until the last animal in the cages was
excited and ill at ease. In truth, since it was Mulcachy's boast that he
could break the best animal living, no end of the hardest cases fell to
his hand. He had built a reputation for succeeding where others failed,
and, endowed with fearlessness, callousness, and cunning, he never let
his reputation wane. There was nothing he dared not tackle, and, when he
gave up an animal, the last word was said. For it, remained nothing but
to be a cage-animal, in solitary confinement, pacing ever up and down,
embittered with all the world of man and roaring its bitterness to the
most delicious enthrillment of the pay-spectators.

During the three months spent by Michael in Mulcachy's Animal Home,
occurred two especially hard cases. Of course, the daily chant of
ordinary pain of training went on all the time through the working hours,
such as of "good" bears and lions and tigers that were made amenable
under stress, and of elephants derricked and gaffed into making the head-
stand or into the beating of a bass drum. But the two cases that were
exceptional, put a mood of depression and fear into all the listening
animals, such as humans might experience in an ante-room of hell,
listening to the flailing and the flaying of their fellows who had
preceded them into the torture-chamber.

The first was of the big Indian tiger. Free-born in the jungle, and free
all his days, master, according to his nature and prowe