of fresh fruit, and a bowl of milk beside which was a little jug
containing something which resembled marmalade. So ravenous was she
that she did not even wait for her companion to reach the table,
and as she ate she could have sworn that never before had she tasted
more palatable food. The old woman came slowly and sat down on one
of the benches opposite her.

As she removed the smaller vessels from the larger and arranged
them before her on the table a crooked smile twisted her lips as
she watched the younger woman eat.

"Hunger is a great leveler," she said with a laugh.

"What do you mean?" asked the girl.

"I venture to say that a few weeks ago you would have been nauseated
at the idea of eating cat."

"Cat?" exclaimed the girl.

"Yes," said the old woman. "What is the difference--a lion is a
cat."

"You mean I am eating lion now?"

"Yes," said the old woman, "and as they prepare it, it is very
palatable. You will grow very fond of it."

Bertha Kircher smiled a trifle dubiously. "I could not tell it,"
she said, "from lamb or veal."

"No," said the woman, "it tastes as good to me. But these lions
are very carefully kept and very carefully fed and their flesh is
so seasoned and prepared that it might be anything so far as taste
is concerned."

And so Bertha Kircher broke her long fast upon strange fruits, lion
meat, and goat's milk.

Scarcely had she finished when again the door opened and there
entered a yellow-coated soldier. He spoke to the old woman.

"The king," she said, "has commanded that you be prepared and brought
to him. You are to share these apartments with me. The king knows
that I am not like his other women. He never would have dared to
put you with them. Herog XVI has occasional lucid intervals. You
must have been brought to him during one of these. Like the rest
of them he thinks that he alone of all the community is sane, but
more than once I have thought that the various men with whom I have
come in contact here, including the kings themselves, looked upon
me as, at least, less mad than the others. Yet how I have retained
my senses all these years is beyond me."

"What do you mean by prepare?" asked Bertha Kircher. "You said
that the king had commanded I be prepared and brought to him."

"You will be bathed and furnished with a robe similar to that which
I wear."

"Is there no escape?" asked the girl. "Is there no way even in
which I can kill myself?"

The woman handed