ment
on his part, that I at last approached the lion's cage. Ah, I knew him
on the instant. The beast! The terrible one! And on my inner vision
flashed the memories of my dreams,--the midday sun shining on tall
grass, the wild bull grazing quietly, the sudden parting of the grass
before the swift rush of the tawny one, his leap to the bull's back, the
crashing and the bellowing, and the crunch crunch of bones; or again,
the cool quiet of the water-hole, the wild horse up to his knees and
drinking softly, and then the tawny one--always the tawny one!--the
leap, the screaming and the splashing of the horse, and the crunch
crunch of bones; and yet again, the sombre twilight and the sad silence
of the end of day, and then the great full-throated roar, sudden, like
a trump of doom, and swift upon it the insane shrieking and chattering
among the trees, and I, too, am trembling with fear and am one of the
many shrieking and chattering among the trees.

At the sight of him, helpless, within the bars of his cage, I became
enraged. I gritted my teeth at him, danced up and down, screaming an
incoherent mockery and making antic faces. He responded, rushing against
the bars and roaring back at me his impotent wrath. Ah, he knew me, too,
and the sounds I made were the sounds of old time and intelligible to
him.

My parents were frightened. "The child is ill," said my mother. "He is
hysterical," said my father. I never told them, and they never knew.
Already had I developed reticence concerning this quality of mine, this
semi-disassociation of personality as I think I am justified in calling
it.

I saw the snake-charmer, and no more of the circus did I see that night.
I was taken home, nervous and overwrought, sick with the invasion of my
real life by that other life of my dreams.

I have mentioned my reticence. Only once did I confide the strangeness
of it all to another. He was a boy--my chum; and we were eight years
old. From my dreams I reconstructed for him pictures of that vanished
world in which I do believe I once lived. I told him of the terrors of
that early time, of Lop-Ear and the pranks we played, of the gibbering
councils, and of the Fire People and their squatting places.

He laughed at me, and jeered, and told me tales of ghosts and of the
dead that walk at night. But mostly did he laugh at my feeble fancy.
I told him more, and he laughed the harder. I swore in all earnestness
that these things were so, and he be