d me. I can see his amazed face now, with
the morning sunlight upon it. He peered at me, and peered again. Then
he closed the door behind him, and advanced to the cage to see if I
were really dead.

I cannot undertake to say what happened. I was not in a fit state to
witness or to chronicle such events. I can only say that I was
suddenly conscious that his face was away from me--that he was looking
towards the animal.

"Good old Tommy!" he cried. "Good old Tommy!"

Then he came near the bars, with his back still towards me.

"Down, you stupid beast!" he roared. "Down, sir! Don't you know your
master?"

Suddenly even in my bemuddled brain a remembrance came of those words
of his when he had said that the taste of blood would turn the cat into
a fiend. My blood had done it, but he was to pay the price.

"Get away!" he screamed. "Get away, you devil! Baldwin! Baldwin! Oh,
my God!"

And then I heard him fall, and rise, and fall again, with a sound like
the ripping of sacking. His screams grew fainter until they were lost
in the worrying snarl. And then, after I thought that he was dead, I
saw, as in a nightmare, a blinded, tattered, blood-soaked figure
running wildly round the room--and that was the last glimpse which I
had of him before I fainted once again.

I was many months in my recovery--in fact, I cannot say that I have
ever recovered, for to the end of my days I shall carry a stick as a
sign of my night with the Brazilian cat. Baldwin, the groom, and the
other servants could not tell what had occurred, when, drawn by the
death-cries of their master, they found me behind the bars, and his
remains--or what they afterwards discovered to be his remains--in the
clutch of the creature which he had reared. They stalled him off with
hot irons, and afterwards shot him through the loophole of the door
before they could finally extricate me. I was carried to my bedroom,
and there, under the roof of my would-be murderer, I remained between
life and death for several weeks. They had sent for a surgeon from
Clipton and a nurse from London, and in a month I was able to be
carried to the station, and so conveyed back once more to Grosvenor
Mansions.

I have one remembrance of that illness, which might have been part of
the ever-changing panorama conjured up by a delirious brain were it not
so definitely fixed in my memory. One night, when the nurse was
absent, the door of my chamber opened, and a ta