I followed, expecting to see Eustace; but the rider was instead Dermot Tracy, who in unfeigned alarm asked if he were seriously ill; and when I laughed and explained, he gave his horse, to the groom, and came quietly enough, to satisfy Dora, into the hall with us.

There he stood transfixed, gazing at the great sleeping figure with a passion of enthusiasm in his dark-grey eyes.  “Glorious!” he said.  “Splendid fellow!  Worthy of the deed, Lucy!  It was the most plucky thing I ever saw!”

“You distinguished yourself too,” I said.

“I?  Why, I had a rifle.  I galloped down to Grice’s for mine at the first, when I saw the menagerie people were cowed.  What’s that to going at him alone, and mastering him too, as he had done before those idiots thought proper to yell?”

Being talked about, of course, awoke Harold; his eyes opened, and he answered for himself, greeting Dermot heartily.  Only then did we understand the full history of what had happened.  The lion-tamer, whose part it was to exhibit the liberty he could take with the animals, was ill, and his assistant, after much bravado as to his equal power, had felt his courage quail, and tried to renew it with drink.  Thus he was in no state to perceive that he had only shot-to the bolt of the door of the cage; and his behaviour had so irritated the beast that, after so dealing with him that he lay in a most dangerous state, he had dashed out at the door in rage and terror, and, after seizing the hindmost of the flying crowd, had lain down between the shafts of the waggon, as we had seen him.

The keepers had lost their heads in the panic, and no one durst go near him.  The lion-tamer had to be called from his bed, in lodgings in the town, and only came on the scene just as Dermot’s rifle had finished the struggle.  The master had quite seen the necessity, but was in great despair at the loss of so valuable an animal.

“I’ll share in making it good to him,” said Harold.

“You?  You are the last to do so.  If you had only been let alone, the beast would have been captured unhurt.  No, no!  I settled all that, as it was I who meddled in the matter when, I believe, you could have settled him yourself.”

“I don’t know that,” said Harold.  “I was glad enough to see your rifle at his ear.  But I should like to have his skin, if they would sell it.”

Dermot explained that he had been bargaining for the skin, and hoped Mr. Alison would accept it from him, but here Harold’s resolution won the day, much as Dermot evidently longed to lay the trophy at his feet.  Poor Dermot, I could see hero-worship growing in his eyes, as they talked about horses, endlessly as men can and do talk of them, and diligent inquiries elicited from Harold what things he had done with the unbroken animal in Australia.