"No," sez she, "only their dust, I have got three in a vase on my mantle piece in Surf Avenue." Instinctively I thought "she'd had husbands to burn, but some wimmen can't get one to save their lives, and them that get one can't keep track on him." But I d'no whether she saved her vase or not, for we wuz parted by the hustlin', tearin', scramblin' mob, and I wuz carried in another direction, choked and blinded, and tossted and torn. I hearn someone say, "Black Prince is loose, the biggest lion of all!" And sure enough, wild and crazy with the fiery heat and noise, the great beast rushed up and down, the crowd givin' him the Right of Way. And at last he clim' up onto a battlement and looked down on the mad seen below, the shoutin' yellin' mob bore me onwards, so I stood only a stun's throw from the spot. Never agin will there be such a seen presented to the eye of man, as that kingly form, standin' up above the crowd aginst the background of lurid flame. But who wuz that standin' directly beneath, in the very middle of danger? My heart bounded so it most broke through my bodist waist. Did I not know that small boneded figger? That bald head lit up by the glare of flames? It wuz! it wuz Josiah! My pardner-huntin' wuz ended, but wuz it to be death at the gole? That agonizin' thought made me by the side of myself, and entirely onbeknown to me I rushed forwards and cried to the lordly beast above, jest ready to spring: "Don't harm Josiah! Devour me instead!" [Illustration: "_I rushed forwards and cried to the lordly beast above, jest ready to spring: 'Don't harm Josiah! Devour me instead._'" (_See page 303_)] I knowed I would make a better meal for it; Josiah is lean and boney. But I won't try to make myself out better than I am; I didn't think of the lion's digestion, and how Josiah would set on his stomach. My only thought wuz to save my pardner. And with a herculaneum effort I reached his side, and snatched him away jest as a shot rung out and the noble beast fell, his great, shaggy head restin' on the balustrade, lookin' down on the crowd below as if in questionin' agony and contempt, as though his last thoughts wuz: "Did you tear me away from my own free, beautiful, tropical forest for such a fate as this? Where is man's boasted wisdom and power? I could have cared for myself, lived and died in happiness and safety, but civilized man has ruined and destroyed the wild beast." * * * * * The rest of that seen is like a dream to me. I guess when the heavy dread and fear I had carried so long, wuz lifted from my brain, it made me light-headed. 'Tennyrate, it don't seem as if I come fully to myself, till Josiah and I wuz takin' leave at Bildad's with tickets for Jonesville in our pockets.