"Speaking of lions," began Yarner.

He was right, of course; I HAD spoken of lions.

"--I shall never forget," he went on (of course, I knew
he never would), "a rather bad scrape I got into in the
up-country of Uganda. Imagine yourself in a wild, rolling
country covered here and there with kwas along the sides
of the nullahs."

I did so.

"Well," continued Yarner, "we were sitting in our tent
one hot night--too hot to sleep--when all at once we
heard, not ten feet in front of us, the most terrific
roar that ever came from the throat of a lion."

As he said this Yarner paused to take a gulp of bubbling
whiskey and soda and looked at me so ferociously that I
actually shivered.

Then quite suddenly his manner cooled down in the strangest
way, and his voice changed to a commonplace tone as he
said,--

"Perhaps I ought to explain that we hadn't come up to
the up-country looking for big game. In fact, we had
been down in the down country with no idea of going higher
than Mombasa. Indeed, our going even to Mombasa itself