“It is none of my business to go spying on the dear, silly little girl,” he decided. “She must be in love with some other fellow now, by her anxiety over the old fortune teller, who knows no more of her future than the man in the moon. I’d better go back to the house and announce myself, and done with it! Hello, I’ll finish my cigar and drop around to my zoo, and see Zilla first. They wrote me she had two cubs and was savage as a lioness!” He sauntered along in the moonlight when the cigar was lighted; but suddenly his repose was shaken by a terrible sound--loud, piercing shrieks coming from the direction of the zoo. CHAPTER XV. STRANGE MYSTERIES. “The shrieks are coming from the bear pit! What if some one had fallen in there!” cried Bonair, turning suddenly cold as ice with apprehension, and starting at a wild run in the direction of the sounds. As the housekeeper had told Berry, her young master had been fond of animal pets from boyhood, and had quite a choice collection of his own at the southern end of the park, where they were taken care of by a man and his wife. In this miniature zoo there was an aviary, some prairie dogs, a monkey house, and some larger animals, including bears of different species. Zilla, the black bear, was his favorite. He had got her himself several years ago while deer hunting in the mountains of West Virginia. A handsome fawn, a black bear cub, and some smaller animals, were the trophies he carried home, and he had duly christened the cub Zilla, and petted her so much that she loved him with a doglike devotion. In his last letter from his sister Marie, she had told him that Zilla was now the proud parent of twins, and had become fierce as a lioness in defense of her young. He had just started for the bear pit, idly wondering if Zilla would know him again after his absence of almost a year, when those frenzied shrieks of some one in deadly peril made him fly to the rescue in breathless haste, his heart sinking with a terrible dread. Suppose it were little Berry herself that had unwittingly stumbled and fallen into the bear pit? Oh, horrors! One blow of Zilla’s big paw would be sufficient to kill the lovely brown-eyed maid. In the twinkling of an eye, she would be dead! There was one chance in a hundred for her life. If he could get there before the fatal blow was given, if he could spring down into the pit, and arrest Zilla’s furious onslaught by the sound of his voice--the voice of the beloved master! But would she remember him still? Would she yield obedience to his command in her new character of motherhood, filled with the instinct of protection to her young? If she would not, then woe unto any poor wretch who had fallen into her angry clutches! With these thoughts in his mind he flew toward the zoo, with a wild prayer in his heart to be in time, just in time! Every moment was an eternity, and his feet seemed to drag beneath him. He had never realized the value of a moment of time before.