had shown himself a friend; this seemed a new hope, and the keeper,
taking up the old call, "Honey, Jacky--honey!" pushed the comb till it
touched his muzzle. The smell was wafted to his sense, its message
reached his brain; hope honored, it must awake response. The great
tongue licked the comb, appetite revived, and thus in newborn Hope
began the chapter of his gloom.

Skilful keepers were there with plans to meet the Monarch's every
want. Delicate foods were offered and every shift was tried to tempt
him back to strength and prison life.

He ate and--lived.

And still he lives, but pacing--pacing--pacing--you may see him,
scanning not the crowds, but something beyond the crowds, breaking
down at times into petulant rages, but recovering anon his ponderous
dignity, looking--waiting--watching--held ever by that Hope, that
unknown Hope, that came. Kellyan has been to him since, but Monarch
knows him not. Over his head, beyond him, was the great Bear's gaze,
far away toward Tallac or far away on the sea, we knowing not which or
why, but pacing--pacing--pacing--held like the storied Wandering One
to a life of ceaseless journey--a journey aimless, endless, and sad.

The wound-spots long ago have left his shaggy coat, but the earmarks
still are there, the ponderous strength, the elephantine dignity. His
eyes are dull,--never were bright,--but they seem not vacant, and most
often fixed on the Golden Gate where the river seeks the sea.

The river, born in high Sierra's flank, that lived and rolled and
grew, through mountain pines, o'erleaping man-made barriers, then to
reach with growing power the plains and bring its mighty flood at last
to the Bay of Bays, a prisoner there to lie, the prisoner of the
Golden Gate, seeking forever Freedom's Blue, seeking and
raging--raging and seeking--back and forth, forever--in vain.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONARCH, THE BIG BEAR OF TALLAC***

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