nd on her guard. What was to be done? Martin had heard that wild
creatures cannot stand the human eye. Accordingly, he stood erect, and
fixed his on the leopard: the leopard returned a savage glance, and
never took her eye off Martin. Then Martin continuing to look the beast
down, the leopard, brutally ignorant of natural history, flew at his
head with a frightful yell, flaming eyes, and jaws and distended. He had
but just time to catch her by the throat, before her teeth could crush
his face; one of her claws seized his shoulder and rent it, the other,
aimed at his cheek, would have been more deadly still, but Martin was
old-fashioned, and wore no hat, but a scapulary of the same stuff as his
jerkin, and this scapulary he had brought over his head like a hood; the
brute's claw caught in the loose leather. Martin kept her teeth off his
face with great difficulty, and griped her throat fiercely, and she
kept rending his shoulder. It was like blunt reaping-hooks grinding and
tearing. The pain was fearful; but, instead of cowing the old soldier,
it put his blood up, and he gnashed his teeth with rage almost as fierce
as hers, and squeezed her neck with iron force. The two pair of eyes
flared at one another--and now the man's were almost as furious as the
brute's. She found he was throttling her, and made a wild attempt
to free herself, in which she dragged his cowl all over his face and
blinded him, and tore her claw out of his shoulder, flesh and all; but
still he throttled her with hand and arm of iron. Presently her
long tail, that was high in the air, went down. "Aha!" cried Martin,
joyfully, and gripped her like death; next, her body lost its
elasticity, and he held a choked and powerless thing: he gripped it
still, till all motion ceased, then dashed it to the earth; then,
panting, removed his cowl: the leopard lay mute at his feet with tongue
protruding and bloody paw; and for the first time terror fell on Martin.
"I am a dead man: I have slain the Duke's leopard." He hastily seized
a few handfuls of leaves and threw them over her; then shouldered the
buck, and staggered away, leaving a trail of blood all the way his own
and the buck's. He burst into Peter's house a horrible figure, bleeding
and bloodstained, and flung the deer's carcass down.

"There--no questions," said he, "but broil me a steak on't, for I am
faint."

Margaret did not see he was wounded; she thought the blood was all from
the deer.

She busied