New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1909-10-17
SUNDAY MAGAZINE FOR OCIObEN H. 10

walked calmly out from the shrubbery and stood
surveying the scene with head erect, feet planted
and his long tail switching nervOusy.
y howl burst from the distant crowd. The men
who had started back stopped in their tracks, some
of them beat a retreat The person nearest to the
animal GriSCOm who sat on his bench scarcely
ten yards from where the lion had emerged from the
bushes. To the OnlOokers he appeared to be con-
temptuOusly indifferent to the danger as he did not
turn rise to face the brute. Nothing in his
attitude betrayed the helpless devitalzing anguish
of terror and repugnance that rendered him power
less to stir hand foot and held him inert resist
lessly awaiting the nemesis not to be avoided the
doom that had to be fulfilled
But the crowd knew nothing of this; they saw
merely quiet young man sitting on a bench pluck
lily regardless of danger from which everybody else
had fed and it is probable that some of the men,
shamed by his example, might have returned and
driven the brute back to his cage but for unlocked
diversion. The lions attention evidently at
traCted by something close at hand: for he took no
heed of either GriscOm the distant shouting mob.
An older animal or one brought from his savage
state might have been COwed by the sudden change
IN his surroundings and the human uproar but this
lion had first the light of day in the menagerie of
a circus, he was accustomed to clamoring crowds
and changing scenes. He had been much bored IN
his cage at the Zoo and thoroughly enjoying the
smell of the leaves and the cool damp turf beneath
his pads. and he had been looking about to what
next to investigate when his bright curious eye
caught by living object close at hand.
GRISCOM, watching in his nerveless apathy, was
quick to discover what it Partly hidden
IN the foliage and not ten feet from where the lion
had come out girl was sitting on a campstoo a
sketchbook lying on her lap. Apparently she had
picked out this secluded spot where she might be
far from the eyes of the curious and had been intent
upon her sketch when the bushes directly in front of
her had parted before the tawny head of his Royal
Hghness
Gri5com's heart which seemed to have stopped
beating gave a sudden frantic futter. With the
Spasmodlc beat came also some muscular control. 1t
was not much but it enabled him to turn his head
and stare over his shoulder for the lion had emerged
almost abreast of where he sat He saw that the
girl was sitting motOnless her face like chalk and he
noticed also that her cOlOrless lips moving
gently, if in PRAYER
Where she sat the girl was hidden from the crowd
from which there rose a warning cry Griscom got
UP from his seat, slowly and painfully, like a man
VINO was old rheumatic or had grown stiff from
sitting too long in position For an instant he
stood still supporting himself with one hand on the
back OF the bench The lion intent upon the girl
did not heed him, and Griscom fighting with all the
Will that was in him for the control of mind and body
IN the face of his crushing fear stared the girl also
neither through instinct from the expression of
her lax, dropping limbs and hopeless face it entered
his mind in flash that she was affected in precisely
the same way he had been. And with this intuition
there came also of those swift eerv intangible
impressions as of the whole scene having been so en-
acted before; a shocking familiarity with it all the
girl the hOn himself. the baWling mOb-all was
familiar, startlingly familiar to him. He caught a
s1uddering breath, and then. with the totterng step
OF man whom long illness had enfeebled he began
to walk slowly toward her
Warning shouts fell unheeded on his ears Come
back, sir. Come back! Els bad one e is! 'Ook it.
guy nor Wen e amt lookn Leave i'm aloneI Ere
a modulated accent called warninglv. Better not
bait him. He might turn nasty and there's no need!"
RUT Griscom walking SLOWLY toward the lion knew
- there was need strong, urgent need If the girl
mad acted IN any other way which is to say that if
she had acted at all the chances are that the lion
would have passed her by Had She faced him boldly
screamed, made motion either toward or away
from HIM, done anything in fact but projected