| We watched the creature with more of curiosity than alarm. Unless brought to bay, or hungry, or wantonly irritated, these great cats were cowardly enough. It would hardly attack the two of us. Nearer and nearer it came, showing no signs of an- ger and none of fear, and paying no attention to the withered branch with which Diccon tried to scare it off. When it was so close that we could see the white of its breast it stopped, look- ing at us with large unfaltering eyes, and slightly moving its tail to and fro. "A tame panther!" ejaculated Diccon. "It must be the one Nantauquas tamed, sir. He would have kept it somewhere near Master Rolfe's house." "And it heard us, and followed us through the gate," I said. "It was the third the warder talked of." We walked on, and the beast, addressing itself to motion, fol- lowed at our heels. Now and then we looked back at it, but we feared it not. As for me, I had begun to think that a panther might be the least formidable thing I should meet that night. By this I had scarcely any hope—or fear—that I should find her at our journey's end. The lonesome path that led only to the night- time forest, the deep and dark river with its mournful voice, the hard, bright, pitiless stars, the cold, the loneliness, the dis- tance,—how should she be there? And if not she, who then? The hut to which I had been directed stood in an angle made by the neck and the main bank of the river. On one side of it was the water, on the other a deep wood. The place had an evil name, and no man had lived there since the planter who had built it hanged himself upon its threshold. The hut was ruinous: in the summer tall weeds grew up around it, and venomous |
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