ut till she seemed twice
her normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger's when the
quarry is before it. Elias P. Hutcheson when he saw her was amused,
and his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said:

'Darned if the squaw hain't got on all her war paint! Jest give her a
shove off if she comes any of her tricks on me, for I'm so fixed
everlastingly by the boss, that durn my skin if I can keep my eyes
from her if she wants them! Easy there, Judge! don't you slack that ar
rope or I'm euchered!'

At this moment Amelia completed her faint, and I had to clutch hold of
her round the waist or she would have fallen to the floor. Whilst
attending to her I saw the black cat crouching for a spring, and
jumped up to turn the creature out.

But at that instant, with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled
herself, not as we expected at Hutcheson, but straight at the face of
the custodian. Her claws seemed to be tearing wildly as one sees in
the Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and as I looked I saw one
of them light on the poor man's eye, and actually tear through it and
down his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood seemed to
spurt from every vein.

With a yell of sheer terror which came quicker than even his sense of
pain, the man leaped back, dropping as he did so the rope which held
back the iron door. I jumped for it, but was too late, for the cord
ran like lightning through the pulley-block, and the heavy mass fell
forward from its own weight.

As the door closed I caught a glimpse of our poor companion's face. He
seemed frozen with terror. His eyes stared with a horrible anguish as
if dazed, and no sound came from his lips.

And then the spikes did their work. Happily the end was quick, for
when I wrenched open the door they had pierced so deep that they had
locked in the bones of the skull through which they had crushed, and
actually tore him--it--out of his iron prison till, bound as he was,
he fell at full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the face
turning upward as he fell.

I rushed to my wife, lifted her up and carried her out, for I feared
for her very reason if she should wake from her faint to such a scene.
I laid her on the bench outside and ran back. Leaning against the
wooden column was the custodian moaning in pain whilst he held his
reddening handkerchief to his eyes. And sitting on the head of the
poor American was the cat, purring loudly as she licked the blood