nger at the
carelessness of the carpenter who had left a board loose at the top of
the den.

[Illustration: _The table in front of the Arena._]

"Of course, that might have been a serious thing for the jaguar and for
my pocket book," said the Proprietor as three deep scratches in his head
were being plastered up. "I couldn't afford to take any chances of an
accident, and he would have been shot if he had attempted to come
through a ventilator into the Arena, but a trained animal like that is
worth a goodish bit of money. He let me know he was loose by giving me
his love pat when I was walking through the runway, and as Morelli is
the only one who can do anything with him I sent for her. She can whip
considerably more than her own weight in wild-cats, and there was not
the slightest danger to the audience, but not many men would have
relished her task of going into that passage with the beast loose on top
of the cages." He negatived the Press Agent's suggestion to make a
scare-head story of the escape for the papers, and suggested that they
should go up and hear Madam Morelli's account of it. She was sitting on
the edge of her bed, mending a rip which the jaguar's sharp claws had
made in her gown, and she shrugged her shoulders when the Stranger
inquired if she had been hurt.

[Illustration: _Two French clowns and a performing dog._]

"It was nothing," she said laughing. "He jumped at me from the top of a
cage when I came in, but I beat him off and whipped him back into his
cage. It was only the close quarters which made it bad, for I am used to
fighting them." She was interrupted by a yapping and caterwauling in the
doorway, and sprang on the bed, her face white with terror, as a small
terrier and the menagerie cat rolled into the room in a clawing, biting
mix-up. The terrier was raising a litter of puppies in the next room,
and the cat had transformed the space back of Morelli's bed into a
feline nursery, and a meeting of the two anxious mothers in the hall had
led to trouble. Madam Morelli always goes through her performance in an
evening dress, and she stood on the bed, her long train gathered closely
about her, trembling like a leaf, when the Proprietor finally separated
the combatants and restored peace.

"You wouldn't think that a woman who had just come from a fight with a
two hundred pound jaguar, which could easily tear her to pieces, would
be scared at a scrap between a toy terrier and a mongrel cat," sai