was calling, half in derisive jocularity,
half in uneasy admiration....

The trainer shunted me into the cage, after seating his lions in a
half-moon on their tubs.

"Quick! Step in! We'll be on the outside ready with hot irons in case
anything goes wrong!"

I didn't know whether the trainer was jesting or serious.

"Don't think of them at all. They'll sit still ... you can turn your
back to them and face the audience. It will be safe. Only don't make any
unexpected, quick motions."

I was in among them. The door clanged behind me.

Nobody jeered now. All was filled with an expectant hush.

Then, as if strange and a-far from myself, I stepped easily into the
very centre of the half moon of squatting beasts, and made my speech ...
at the end, there was hardly any applause till I was safely out of the
cage ... Then there was a tumult. Shouts, cat-calls, whoops, and a great
noise of hearty hand-clapping.

I stood beside the ropes as the people of Laurel surged by, many of them
shaking me by the hand ... Vanna came by, with the big football player
with her, bulking behind her slight loveliness ... lightly she put a
tiny, gloved hand in mine ... a glove neatly mended at the fingers ...
congratulating me, half with feeling, half with amusement....

"That was reckless and brave, Mr. Gregory."

I was speechless with frightened delight over her words, and the
pressure of her hand.

I turned to the trainer before I went to my room over the tin-shop.

"You say the leopards are most dangerous?"

"Yes."

"For twenty-five dollars a night I will go in with them, alone, and run
them around with a whip." As I proposed this, in the background of my
consciousness was the conviction that by so doing I could win Vanna's
love....

"No ... the leopards are too uncertain."

* * * * *

The papers were full of my deed. And I was not made fun of, but
commended. And it was announced (for advertising purposes only, of
course) that the management of the show had approached me with an offer
to travel as a trainer of wild animals.

The second night I was rather blase. I shook my finger playfully in the
face of one of the seated lions ... to have a sensation of a thousand
prickles running sharp through each pore, when the lion responded with
an open, crimson-mouthed, yellow-fanged snarl; I smelt the carrion
fetor of his breath. I stepped back rather quickly. All the animals grew
restless and furtiv