ped back into the road. It was like a bull-fighter
vaulting the barriers into the perils of the arena,--only it was to
save, not to destroy. The dog had passed him and was nearer the children
than he was. I wondered what he expected to do as I saw him running
lightly, swiftly, and yet quietly behind the terrible beast. As he
neared the animal, he stooped, and my blood froze as I saw him seize the
dog with both hands by the hinder legs. The head curled sidewise and
under, and the teeth almost grazed the young man's hands with a vicious,
metallic snap. Then we saw what the contest was. The young man, with a
powerful circling sweep of his arms, whirled the dog so swiftly about
his head that the lank frame swung out in a straight line, and the snap
could not be repeated. But what of the end? No muscles could long stand
such a strain, and when they yielded, then what?

Then we saw that as he swung his loathsome foe, the young man was
gradually approaching the schoolhouse. We saw the horrible snapping head
whirl nearer and nearer at every turn to the corner of the building.
Then we saw the young man strike a terrible blow at the stone wall,
using the dog as a club; and in a moment I saw the stones splashed with
red, and the young man lying on the ground, where the violence of his
effort had thrown him, and by him lay the quivering form of what we had
fled from. And the young man was James Elkins.

Alice breathed hard as I finished, and stood straight with her chin held
high.

"That was fine!" said she. "I want to see that man!"

CHAPTER IV.

Jim discovers his Coral Island.

There has long been abroad in the world a belief that events which bear
some controlling relation to one's destiny are announced by premonition,
some spiritual trepidation, some movement of that curtain which cuts off
our view of the future. I believe this notion to be false, but feel that
it is true; and the manner in which that adventure of mine in the old
art gallery and at Auriccio's impressed my mind, and the way in which my
memory clung to it, seem to justify my feeling rather than my belief.
Whenever I visited Chicago, I went to the gallery, more in the hope of
seeing the girl whose only name to me was "the Empress" than to gratify
my cravings for art. I felt a boundless pity for her--and laughed at
myself for taking so seriously an incident which, in all likelihood, she
herself dismissed with a few tears, a few retrospective burnings