pinned fast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, and
no one dared be more than barely civil to his wife. And she was a
sly bit of baggage, too, only all hands were afraid of De Ville.

"But there was one man, Wallace, who was afraid of nothing. He was
the lion-tamer, and he had the self-same trick of putting his head
into the lion's mouth. He'd put it into the mouths of any of them,
though he preferred Augustus, a big, good-natured beast who could
always be depended upon.

"As I was saying, Wallace--'King' Wallace we called him--was afraid
of nothing alive or dead. He was a king and no mistake. I've seen
him drunk, and on a wager go into the cage of a lion that'd turned
nasty, and without a stick beat him to a finish. Just did it with
his fist on the nose.

"Madame de Ville--"

At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned quietly around. It was
a divided cage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around the
partition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf who was trying
to pull it off by main strength. The arm seemed stretching out
longer end longer like a thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey's
mates were raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, so the
Leopard Man stepped over a couple of paces, dealt the wolf a sharp
blow on the nose with the light cane he carried, and returned with a
sadly apologetic smile to take up his unfinished sentence as though
there had been no interruption.

"--looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while De