the cage of a lion that'd turned nasty,
and without a stick beat him to a finish. Just did it with his fist on
the nose.

"Madame de Ville--"

At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned quietly around. It was
a divided cage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around the
partition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf who was trying to
pull it off by main strength. The arm seemed stretching out longer end
longer like a thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey's mates were
raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, so the Leopard Man
stepped over a couple of paces, dealt the wolf a sharp blow on the nose
with the light cane he carried, and returned with a sadly apologetic
smile to take up his unfinished sentence as though there had been no
interruption.

"--looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while De Ville
looked black. We warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughed at us,
as he laughed at De Ville one day when he shoved De Ville's head into a
bucket of paste because he wanted to fight.

"De Ville was in a pretty mess--I helped to scrape him off; but he was
cool as a cucumber and made no threats at all. But I saw a glitter in
his eyes which I had seen often in the eyes of wild beasts, and I went
out of my way to give Wallace a final warning. He laughed, but he did
not look so much in Madame de Ville's direction after that.

"Several months passed by. Nothing had happened and I was beginning to
think it all a scare over nothing. We were West by that time, showing in
'Frisco. It was during the afternoon performance, and the big tent was
filled with women and children, when I went looking for Red Denny, the
head canvas-man, who had walked off with my pocket-knife.

"Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced in through a hole in the
canvas to see if I could locate him. He wasn't there, but directly in
front of me was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for his turn to go on
with his cage of performing lions. He was watching with much amusement a
quarrel between a couple of trapeze artists. All the rest of the people
in the dressing tent were watching the same thing, with the exception
of De Ville whom I noticed staring at Wallace with undisguised hatred.
Wallace and the rest were all too busy following the quarrel to notice
this or what followed.

"But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. De Ville drew his
handkerchief from his pocket, made as though to mop the sweat fro