dreadful creature of which he had just been hearing. Reckless as he was, the thief felt his heart stand still. Next moment he jumped to one side, climbed the wall of the cottage, and hid on the roof. Meantime the tiger, making sure that the unseen thing, which had come upon him in the darkness, was nothing less than the Lio itself, got up and fled. He ran and he ran, until he met a deer in the forest. The deer drew respectfully to the side of the path, as in duty bound when meeting his betters. “Where does his Excellency come from in such a hurry?” he inquired in rather a timid voice. “Oh! from nowhere, from nowhere at all,” answered the tiger, a little bit confused by what had just happened. Then he recovered himself and told the deer how a terrible beast, called the Lio, had touched him in the dark. “A Lio, your Excellency! Why, I never even heard of a Lio,” said the deer in great surprise. “What is it like?” “A Lio is very clever,” said the tiger; “it climbs houses and comes on you in the dark. If you would like to know more about it I will take you to where it is. Come, let us go together.” “But the Lio will catch me, your Excellency, I am but a weak creature,” said the deer, drawing back a little, for he did not wish to be gobbled up. He never had known the tiger so quiet and polite before, and he could see by the gleam of the great green eyes, even in the dark, that his companion was turning his head every now and then, as if he thought the Lio might come gliding through the forest to spring upon them at any moment. “Don’t be afraid,” said the tiger, growing braver at the thought of having a companion to go back with him, “I will take care of you.” “But, your Excellency, the Lio will come and you will run away and leave me to be caught,” answered the deer. “Oh, no, we can tie our tails together, and then it will be all right,” said the tiger. For you must know that at that time the deer’s tail was much longer than it is now. “Tie our tails together and both get caught at once,” gasped the deer, so surprised that he forgot to be polite. “Not at all,” said the tiger, with a little growl in his voice. “When the Lio comes I will ‘put forth my strength’ and pull you away with a whisk before it can get hold of you.” “Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the deer, his spotted sides shaking until the white marks danced again, “what a clever plan.” So the deer and the tiger tied their tails together, and set off to look for the Lio. They had to walk carefully through the forest, because the bushes and trees would get between them, and as they went along they talked in whispers about the Lio, until the deer felt creepy all over. At last they reached the edge of the wood, where they could just make out the black cottage looking very dark against the sky. A branch cracked as they passed under the last tree.