and stood erect on the nearer one! Not a moment had I left. The lion, with great noise of claws on the granite, came tearing to the surface. I crouched down out of breath on the outer edge of my column, so as to be surely out of reach of his ponderous paws. I expected him to decide the matter at once, to reach us or give it up instantly. But he seemed in no haste now. He scarcely advanced at all, for what seemed to me to be a long time. Finally, jerking his tail like the swift movement of a serpent, he strode along the farthest edge of the granite slab and seemed to take no notice of us whatever. Blood was dripping from his mouth, but he did not seem to heed it.

Once more he strode with his old majesty, and seemed ashamed that he should have descended to the indignity of a struggle to gain the place where he now stood sullen and triumphant. Enraged? He was choking, dying with rage; and yet this kingly creature would not even condescend to look in our direction.

Why, I could feel his fearful rage as he now walked on and around the edge of that granite slab. At length he came opposite to where I lay crouching on the farther edge of my column. He passed on without so much as turning his eyes in my direction. And yet I felt, I felt and knew, as distinctly as if he could have talked and told me, that he was carefully measuring the distance.

When the lion, in his stately round, came to the narrow pass by which he had ascended he paused an instant, and half lowered his head.

Ah, how devoutly I did pray that he would be generous enough to descend to the sands and gracefully present us with his absence.

But no! Lifting his huge head even higher in the air than before, he now passed on hurriedly, came on around to where in his stately majesty he stood with quivering flank and flashing eye almost within reach of me. Yet he still disdained to even so much as look at me. His head was far above me as I crouched there on the farther edge of my column; his flashing eyes were lifted and looking far above me and beyond me. Maybe he was on the lookout over the desert for the coming of his companion.

Soon, however, he set his huge paws on the very edge of the great slab on which he stood, and then suddenly threw his right paw out toward me and against the edge of my column with the force and velocity of a catapult!

I heard the sharp, keen claws strike and scrape on the granite as if they had been hooks of steel.

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