stronia's fingers, before its eyes were half open. It
always has been tame and is tame with everybody, not only with all
Nemestronia's household, not only with frequenters of her reception rooms,
but also with casual visitors, total strangers to it. Nobody would think
it anything wonderful for Hedulio to handle Nemestronia's leopard."

"I do not mean merely handling," said Agathemer respectfully. "I mean
something quite amazing in itself. And that leads me to remark that none
of you gentlemen has mentioned or referred to what I regard as one of my
master's most amazing feats and one which he has repeated countless times
in the presence of uncountable witnesses: I mean taking a bone away from a
vicious dog which has never seen him before. I think that amounts to a
portent, or would if it had not happened so often."

"Incredible!" cried Tanno.

Then the whole room broke into a hubbub of confirmations and
corroborations of Agathemer's statement.

"I give in," Tanno declared, "now for the leopard."

"I am told," said Agathemer, "that all such animals, lions, tigers,
leopards, panthers and lynxes, when they set out on their nocturnal
prowlings, intent on catching prey, have the strange habit of giving
notice to all creatures within hearing that they are about to begin
hunting, by a series of roars, snarls, squalls, screams, screeches or
whatever they may be properly called for each variety of animal.

"Now one of the tricks of Nemestronia's leopard, which she is fond of
exhibiting to her guests, is its method of approaching any live creature
exposed to its mercy for its food. If a kid, hare, lamb, porker or what
not is turned into one of Nemestronia's walled gardens and the leopard let
in, she will, at first sight of the game, crouch belly-flat on the ground
and give out a really appalling series of screams or whatever they should
be called, entirely unlike any other noise she ever makes. Her hunting-
squall, as Nemestronia calls it, rises and falls like a tune on an organ,
and besides changing from shriller to less shrill alters in volume from
louder to less loud and louder again. It is an experience to hear it, for
it is like no sound anyone in Rome ever heard and is unforgettable."

"There you are wrong," Tanno cut in, "it is the normal hunting cry of a
leopard. But not many leopards in captivity ever give it. She is the only
leopard I ever heard give it in captivity, but I have heard it in the
deserts south of Gaet