ed one when he did.

"Do you really think there's a chance?" he asked, presently.

"I don't know," I said.

"Well, we can try."

"Oh yes."

Speed dropped his elbows on the table. "Poor old governor," he said.

Then he began to talk of our own prospects, which were certainly
obscure if not alarming; but he soon gave up speculation as futile,
and grew reminiscent, recalling our first acquaintance as discharged
soldiers from the African battalions, our hand-to-mouth existence as
gentlemen farmers in Algiers, our bankruptcy and desperate struggle in
Marseilles, first as dock-workmen, then as government horse-buyers for
the cavalry, then as employes of the Hippodrome in Paris, where I
finally settled down as bareback rider, lion-tamer, and instructor in
the haute-ecole; and he accepted a salary as aid to Monsieur Gaston
Tissandier, the scientist, who was experimenting with balloons at
Saint-Cloud.

He spoke, too, of our enlistment in the Imperial Police, and the hopes
we had of advancement, which not only brought no response from me, but
left us both brooding sullenly on our wrongs, crouched there over the
rough camp-table under the stars.

"Oh, hell!" muttered Speed, "I'm going to bed."

But he did not move. Presently he said, "How did you ever come to
handle wild animals?"

"I've always been fond of animals; I broke colts at home; I had bear
cubs and other things. Then, in Algiers, the regiment caught a couple
of lions and kept them in a cage, and--well, I found I could do what I
liked with them."

"They're afraid of your eyes, aren't they?"

"I don't know--perhaps it's that; I can't explain it--or, rather, I
could partly explain it by saying that I am not afraid of them. But I
never trust them."

"You drag them all around the cage! You shove them about like sacks
of meal!"

"Yes,... but I don't trust them."

"It seems to me," said Speed, "that your lions are getting rather
impudent these days. They're not very much afraid of you now."

"Nor I of them," I said, wearily; "I'm much more anxious about you
when you go sailing about in that patched balloon of yours. Are you
never nervous?"

"Nervous? When?"

"When you're up there?"

"Rubbish."

"Suppose the patches give way?"

"I never think of that," he said, leaning on the table with a yawn.
"Oh, Lord, how tired I am!... but I shall not be able to sleep. I'm
actually too tired to sleep. Have you got a pack of cards, Scarlett?
or a decent cigar,