mped her brood into silence, was making frantic
and what she imagined to be surreptitious signals of distress with her
left arm, keeping her eyes glued on Leonie, who was clinging to the
bars with both hands whilst calling upon the tiger to come back.

He came back, half crouched, noiselessly, stealthily, the hair of the
belly almost touching the ground, for all the world like a cat about to
spring upon an unsuspecting sparrow.

He came to a standstill within an inch of the bars and threw his
pointed ears straight forward so that they stood out at right angles to
the beautifully marked face; spasmodically twitched back the mouth
without a sound issuing therefrom, and then lay down and pressed his
head against the bars.

The tiny hand was stroking the silky ears, patting the head, and
prodding contentedly into the thick fur of the neck when suddenly with
a mighty heart-quaking roar the tiger leapt up and back, and then
hurled himself at the bars.

The keeper had crept, bent double, along the inside of the barrier, and
had most suddenly and surprisingly seized Leonie by the waist and
wrenched her free from the bars to which she had tried to cling,
holding her like a vice in his arms where she vainly kicked and
struggled for freedom.

CHAPTER VII

". . . that man could not be altogether cleared
from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now
does."--_Plutarch_.

The whole house was in an uproar.

The lions were trotting round and round, stopping to listen and snuff in
the sawdust near the bars; the stumpy jaguar, black as ink, with a body
like a steel case, was rushing up and down, rubbing its forehead fiercely
as it turned; a lion and his mate were rearing themselves one after the
other against the walls, half turning from the middle to fall almost
backward in that peculiar movement which reminds one forcibly of great
succeeding waves stopped and thrown back upon themselves by some bleak
rock.

People were pushing and straining to look in at the windows, and rattling
the doors which had been hurriedly locked by the keepers who had rushed
to ascertain the cause of the tumult, whilst the tiger made the place
resound with its terrific roars as it hurled its huge weight again and
again at the bars of its cage.

"Come _on_, Mother," shouted the keeper above the din, "bring all those
children and let's get out. They'll quieten down when we've gone. Can't
you _read_!"

He shook Leonie slightly und