"I'm sorry to turn you out," I said, "for there are lions
around"--indeed they were roaring to each other--"and you will have
a parroty time. But you apologise, or you go!"
He laughed his short thick laugh. "I am a man who hopes nothing,
feels nothing, fears nothing, and believes nothing that you tell
me!"
I got up and went for him with my fists, and whether he feared
nothing or not I don't know; but he scooted, dropping a yellow
French novel, by one Catulle Mendes, that I could make neither head
nor tail of. I afterwards heard that there was something about
this stranger in a book called "The Story of an African Farm,"
which I once began, but never finished, not being able to
understand most of it, and being vexed by the gross improbability
of the girl not marrying the baby's father, he being ready and
willing to make her an honest woman. However, I am no critic, but
a plain man who tells a plain tale, and I believe persons of soul
admire the book very much. Any way, it does not say who the
Stranger was--an allegorical kind of bagman I fancy; but I am not
done with him yet.
Out he went into the dark, where hundreds of lions could be plainly
seen making love (at which season they are very dangerous) by the
flashes of lightning.
It was a terrific yet beautiful spectacle, and one which I can
never forget. The black of night would suddenly open like a huge
silver flower, deep within deep, till you almost fancied you could
see within the gates of heaven.
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