’It is the answer to your question,’ returned Malto quietly. ’That is to say, it partly answers both your questions. I may go so far as to explain that my original object in coming here, before we were found out and pursued, was that you might perhaps hear that terrible roar, and possibly catch sight of the creature which gave utterance to it. But it is not at present in sight, and I imagine that, after what you heard, you will scarcely care to get out on the other side of the pavilion and go to look for it?’ ’I—I think not,’ said Alondra. ’I will take your word for it that we are probably safer even here than we should be down there.’ ’You are,’ answered Malto drily. ’It is a creature upon which neither your trident nor the strange weapons of your young friends would make more impression than upon yonder rocks! Now you will be able, if we ever come before King Ivanta, to confirm one part of what I wish him to know. King Agrando has a name as a collector of all kinds of curiosities and monstrosities. King Ivanta has himself helped him to make his collection the most comprehensive that has ever been seen’—— ’Yes, yes, I know all that,’ Alondra put in impatiently. ’Ay, but what you do not know is this—that Agrando’s object in gathering these out-of-the-way things about him is not altogether a mere harmless love of the curious. He is a monster of cruelty’—— ’A perfect fiend!’ Malandris interjected. ’His craze—for such it is—is a sort of madness,’ Malto continued. ’It is to set men to fight for their lives with the most terrible creatures he can find to pit against them. That is the amusement he and that demon Kazzaro delight in! That is why they have constructed all these secret places, which none know of save themselves and their myrmidons. Little does the noble-minded Ivanta dream of the proceedings of these two, or of the way in which he has himself contributed to them. If he but knew’—— ’Eh, what? How dare—I mean, how can King Ivanta have contributed to such horrible cruelties as you are hinting at?’ demanded Alondra hotly. ’I don’t wonder that you are moved to indignation, young sir. But I am not blaming King Ivanta. He has been deceived. For instance, he, it is said, paid a visit to another planet, and brought back with him many strange and horrible monsters never seen or heard of on our globe. Is it not so?’ ’Well?’ ’Many of them were the young of fearful creatures. But, young or old, he presented Agrando with specimens for his collection.’ ’Very likely. What then? I see no harm in that.’ ’No. For King Ivanta little guessed the use which the tyrant’s ingenious brain would put them to. Agrando gave out that most of them died in captivity, that the climate here did not suit them, and so on. Was it not so?’ ’Very likely. I have heard something of the sort. What then?’