“Down, down, wretched beast, at my feet!”
Oh, wondrous change.
It did not seem possible that the maddened, murderous, plunging beast of a moment ago could be transformed like this into a tender, loving animal that groveled on the ground and licked the master’s hand with a quivering red tongue like a dog’s. But the transformation was wrought.
There she lay prostrate at Bonair’s command, conquered, humble, loving, her huge black body quivering all over, her whole attitude one of complete submission.
“Lie still, now,” her master commanded, roughly stroking her head, even while he turned in an agony of anxiety to that figure huddled on the ground the other side of him. He stooped down to examine it, and as he did so Zilla’s fury returned. She growled and half rose, but his restraining hand thrust her fiercely back.
“Must I slay you, beast?” he demanded, with a blow that forced her to be quiescent, while he made a further examination of the white something that after one moan had given no further sign of life.
Alas, his fearful heart had told him right.
It was she, Berenice Vining, the little maid who had stirred his heart to love’s joy and pain as no other woman had ever done before! Little Berry of the starry eyes and pure heart.
Gowned in simple white and seemingly lifeless, she lay, and he turned to find some implement to slay Zilla, in the rush of furious vengeance.
But the bear had slunk from him to the corner where her darlings whined in their soft nest, and he tripped and fell in his agitation—not in a pool of blood, but upon a soft mass of wool—the thick red blanket he had seen on the Indian fortune teller when she had come to drag Berry away to this hideous doom.