likely
was heard in Jericho.

The tiger just vanished like a Cheshire cat in a book I read once, and I
was running through the night for home and Ivy. But the fire at the cave
was dying, and Ivy was gone.

Well, of course she'd have gone to look for me.... It was then that I
began to whimper and cry. I lit a pine-torch, flung some wood on the
embers, and went out to look for her--whimpering all the time. I'd told
her that I was going out to bait a certain trap and would then come
straight home. So of course she'd have gone straight to that trap--and
it was there I found her.

The torch showed her where she sat, right near the dead chetah, in the
very centre of the trap--triggers all about her--to touch one of which
spelt death; and all around the trap, in a ring--like an audience at a
one-ring circus--were the meat-eaters--the tigers--the lions--the
leopards--and, worst of all, the pigs. There she sat and there they
sat--and no one moved--except me with the torch.

She lifted her great eyes to me and she smiled. All the beasts looked at
me and turned away their eyes from the light and blinked and shifted;
and the old he-lion coughed. They wouldn't come near me because of the
torch--and they wouldn't go near Ivy because of the trap. They knew it
was a trap. They always had known it and so had Ivy. That was why she
had gone into it when so many deaths looked at her in so many
ways--because she knew that in there she'd be safe. All along she'd
known that my old traps and pitfalls wouldn't catch anything; but she'd
never said so--and she'd never laughed at them or at me. I could find it
in my heart to call her a perfect wife--just by that one fact of tact
alone; but there are other facts--other reasons--millions of them.

Suddenly from somewhere near Ivy there came a thin, piping sound.

"It's your little son talking to you," says Ivy, as calm as if she was
sitting up in a four-poster.

"My little son!" I says. That was all for a minute. Then I says:

"Are you all right?"

And she says:

"Sure I am--now that I know you are."

I turned my torch fire-end down and it began to blaze and sputter and
presently roar. Then I steps over to the lion and he doesn't move; and I
points the torch at his dirty face--and lunges.

Ever see a kitten enjoying a fit? That was what happened to him. Then I
ran about, beating and poking and shouting and burning. It was like
Ulysses cleaning the house of suitors and handmaids. All t