again,"
declared the groom. "He's Garcia, Miss Sophie's new lion tamer, but we
ain't had time to tame him yet. He's wild."

The answer to this taunt was a rush from Garcia, who, uttering an
unintelligible roar that might have done credit to one of his lions,
sprang towards the groom. The latter took quick refuge behind the
horse.

The man's fury made Owen step aside, too, but he looked on with an
appreciative smile. As Garcia came back, growling, to his seat on the
box, the secretary stepped up to him and held out his hand.

"Is it really you?" he said, the patronage in his voice offsetting the
familiarity of his manner.

"If it looks like me, it is me," snarled the Gypsy. "Him--over
there," he cried, pointing to the groom, "he donta looka like his own
face if I get him."

"Come, old friend," said Owen in a low voice. "Don't you remember me?
Don't you remember the Zoological Garden in Brussels and the lion that
bent a cage so easily one day that it killed Herr Bruner, of Berlin."

The last words spoken almost in a whisper, had an electrical effect
upon the lion tamer. He fairly writhed in his seat and cowered away
from Owen as from one who held a knife over his head.

It was at this moment that Harry, looking from the hill, put away his
binoculars and turned his car around.

"Come, let's see the lions, may I?" asked Owen, cheerily ignoring the
man's terror, secretly enjoying it.

Without a word Garcia led the way into the stables.

The lions, six in number, were quartered in box stalls rebuilt with
heavy steel bars. They had been quiet, but the sight of a stranger set
them wild and their roaring thundered through the building.

Garcia led Owen to farthest cage and stopped abruptly.

"You after me?" he inquired, his nerve partially recovered.

"Yes, but to help you, not to harm you, old friend."

"You lie, I theenk. You tella the police of the leetle accident in
Bresseli--no?"

"No, indeed; you are too useful a man to lose, Garcia. Besides, I need
you again."

The gypsy held up his hands in refusal. "No," he whispered. "I hava
one dead man's face here always." He pointed to his eyes. "I cry it
away; I go all over da world. I not forget. He not forget. He folla
me."

Owen laughed. "Come, come," he said, "you are foolish. You had
nothing to do with that affair, except to loosen one little bar ever so
little. (Garcia groaned.) And it would be just as easy to leave say a
cage door