could surely say. He
would do nothing but crouch, brooding, sullen and dangerous, at the
back of his cage. Hansen noted the green light flickering fitfully
across his pale, wide eyes, and prudently refrained from pressing
matters.

He was right. For, as a matter of fact, it was against the big Swede
exclusively, and not against man in general, that King was nursing his
grudge. In a dim way it had got into his brain that Hansen had taken
sides with the bear against him and Tomaso, and he thirsted for
vengeance. At the same time, he felt that Tomaso had deserted him. Day
by day, as he brooded, the desire for escape--a desire which he had
never known before--grew in his heart. Vaguely, perhaps, he dreamed
that he would go and find Tomaso. At any rate, he would go--somewhere,
anywhere, away from this world which had turned unfriendly to him.
When this feeling grew dominant, he would rise suddenly and go
prowling swiftly up and down behind the bars of his cage like a wild
creature just caught.

Curiously enough--for it is seldom indeed that Fate responds to the
longing of such exiles from the wild--his opportunity came. Late at
night the show reached a little town among the foothills. The train
had been delayed for hours. The night was dark. Everything was in
confusion, and all nerves on edge. The short road from the station to
the field where the tents were to be set up was in bad repair, or had
never been really a road. It ran along the edge of a steep gully. In
the darkness one wheel of the van containing King's cage dropped to
the hub into a yawning rut. Under the violence of the jolt a section
of the edge of the bank gave way and crashed down to the bottom of the
gully, dragging with it the struggling and screaming horses. The cage
roof was completely smashed in.

To King's eyes the darkness was but a twilight, pleasant and
convenient. He saw an opening big enough to squeeze through; and
beyond it, beyond the wild shouting and the flares of swung lanterns,
a thick wood dark beneath the paler sky. Before any one could get down
to the wreck, he was out and free and away. Crouching with belly to
the earth, he ran noiselessly, and gained the woods before any one
knew he had escaped. Straight on he ran, watchful but swift, heading
for the places where the silence lay heaviest. Within five minutes
Hansen had half the men of the show, with ropes, forks, and lanterns,
hot on the trail. Within fifteen minutes, half the male