"Yes. I was rather upset at first sight of her, you may be sure. To wake and find oneself in a wild place at the mercy of a great animal like that is a startler for any one's nerves, I can assure you. No chance to use one's rifle or anything, you know. However, while I lay very still and watched it, not knowing what to do, I saw it must be a puma, though an unusually large one. Then I thought of what you, Monella, had told us--that we need never be afraid of a puma. And then the beast turned round and began licking my hand! It stood up, too, and purred, and put up its tail just like a tame cat; so I made friends with it and found it was quite disposed to be on good terms. After a bit my dream came back to me, and I went into the wood some distance, but could see nothing. The forest seemed awfully thick, and to get denser at every step; so I finally came away, thinking I must either have had a remarkably vivid dream or vision, or that I had really been the sport of some demons of the mountain such as Matava and his Indian friends so thoroughly believe in." And Jack paused, and looked at his two companions with an odd mixture of doubt and bewilderment. Elwood's face, while he had been listening, had become lighted up with sympathetic enthusiasm. It fell a little at the end of the recital, when Jack made the suggestion about the 'demons.' "Certainly," he said, "it sounds like witchcraft to hear you, our own matter-of-fact Jack, who never dreams, make such suggestions. But, either one way or the other, it goes to prove that there is something very extraordinary about this mountain." Elwood looked at Monella. "What do you think of it all?" he asked. "I think," he replied, "that our friend ought, in future, to be less ready to deride those who may have to tell of strange things, whether dreams and visions, or out-of-the-way experiences." "I admit that to be a just rebuke," Jack responded with a good-natured laugh; "but it does not tell us, all the same, what your real opinion may be." But Monella had already risen from where he had been sitting and moved away to speak to the Indians. "I say, Jack," said Leonard, "can't you _really_ say, straight out, whether you _saw_ this or only dreamed it?" "Truly, my dear boy, it seemed so natural that I should say it was real, only for the inherent improbability of the thing. Then, too, I could see nothing this morning to confirm it, you know." "Surely," Elwood said dreamily, "the Indian tales of demons that can bewitch you cannot have any foundation? There cannot be an unsubstantial city of demons to be seen at night, that vanishes and becomes only plain forest in the daytime? That is taking us back to the Arabian Nights, isn't it?" Jack shook his head. "I am more bewildered and puzzled than I can possibly give you any idea of," he returned. "The whole thing is beyond me; the sight I saw, or dreamed; and then, again, the behaviour of this animal here."