into a zoo. There I found tigers, panthers, leopards and mountain lions. I was wild with joy. I watched these big cats for hours. I asked so many questions of the attendant that he threatened to throw me out. When night came he did force me to go away. For a week I did nothing but haunt that zoo.

“At last it came to me suddenly one day that I could learn nothing really worth while about these wonderful cats unless I could watch them, as I had watched house cats, in their native haunts, as they rested, fed, played and wandered about or stalked their prey. I asked the keeper where their native homes were. He showed me on a map. I was astonished. They were from all over the world, India, Africa, South America, everywhere.

“There were two cats that had caught my eye, the great tawny beast, the Bengal tiger, and the smaller black cat with the shifting eye, the black leopard.

“When I was told that both these came from the jungles of India I was overjoyed. I would go there and follow them day after day, until I knew all their secrets.

“When I told the attendant of my resolve, he laughed at me; said I’d be killed and eaten before I had been in the jungle a day.

“I took to thinking about that; then I tried to study out some way to make the great cats of the jungle afraid of me. I returned again to the zoo and studied the great animals. When the keeper was not looking I tried many things. At last I found one thing that would make them afraid—all but one, the black cat with the shifting eyes; he was not afraid. He leaped at his bars snarling, but I said to myself, ‘He is only one, all other black leopards will be afraid.’”

“Of the crimson flash?” whispered Johnny.

Pant gave him a look of warning, then glanced away at the lake.

“I was only a boy and not very far in my teens at that, but I went to the jungles of India. I don’t remember much how I went. I was a stowaway on a big steamer, then in a smaller one. I helped pole long, heavy barges up an endless river where mosses and grape vines hung thick along the banks, and where great slimy beasts rose from the water to glare at us. I caught the fever and lay for weeks in a bed of a hospital provided for Dutch missionaries.

“After I got well, I poled more boats up the river until, at last, I was in the heart of India, where there were few white men, where there were many naked natives, where it was all jungle, and where 

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