shed.

A wild shriek rang through the echoing place, and with the fall of her
eidolon, the princess herself, till then standing like a statue in front
of me, fell heavily, and lay still. I turned at once and went out: not
again would I seek to restore her! As I stood trembling beside the
cage, I knew that in the black ellipsoid I had been in the brain of the
princess!--I saw the tail of the leopardess quiver once.

While still endeavouring to compose myself, I heard the voice of the
princess beside me.

"Come now," she said; "I will show you what I want you to do for me."

She led the way into the court. I followed in dazed compliance.

The moon was near the zenith, and her present silver seemed brighter
than the gold of the absent sun. She brought me through the trees to the
tallest of them, the one in the centre. It was not quite like the rest,
for its branches, drawing their ends together at the top, made a clump
that looked from beneath like a fir-cone. The princess stood close under
it, gazing up, and said, as if talking to herself,

"On the summit of that tree grows a tiny blossom which would at once
heal my scratches! I might be a dove for a moment and fetch it, but I
see a little snake in the leaves whose bite would be worse to a dove
than the bite of a tiger to me!--How I hate that cat-woman!"

She turned to me quickly, saying with one of her sweetest smiles,

"Can you climb?"

The smile vanished with the brief question, and her face changed to a
look of sadness and suffering. I ought to have left her to suffer, but
the way she put her hand to her wounded neck went to my heart.

I considered the tree. All the way up to the branches, were projections
on the stem like the remnants on a palm of its fallen leaves.

"I can climb that tree," I answered.

"Not with bare feet!" she returned.

In my haste to follow the leopardess disappearing, I had left my sandals
in my room.

"It is no matter," I said; "I have long gone barefoot!"

Again I looked at the tree, and my eyes went wandering up the stem until
my sight lost itself in the branches. The moon shone like silvery
foam here and there on the rugged bole, and a little rush of wind went
through the top with a murmurous sound as of water falling softly into
water. I approached the tree to begin my ascent of it. The princess
stopped me.

"I cannot let you attempt it with your feet bare!" she insisted. "A fall
from the top would kill you!"

"So woul