Picture-Play Weekly (Apr-Oct 1915)

PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY 21 posed for the morrow. All agreed to take a hand in the sport except Kirke. He had no rifle. "There are a number in the den," Elsa told him. "Go in and pick out whichever one you Hke." Kirke rose to enter the room she spoke of and examine the firearms. The tirst one he took down from the rack was his own Springfield rifle. There was no mistaking it, for there were his own initials engraved on the silver plate iin the butt end. His face alight with joy over its recovery, he patted its stock lovingly. "So I've got you back again !"' he said. Iialf aloud. Elsa. who had come after him to see that he found a rifle to suit him, stood in the doorway behind him. She had heard his words, which told her that the rifle with the initials "K. W." on it was his, and her lips pressed firmly together. Unperceived, she drew back out of the doorway, and then turned and walked quickly away. Her lips were still held in the same rigid line. She had vowed to avenge her husband's death by causing that of the man who had killed him when she found him, and he was found. She would keep her oath. The onh thing to be decided was the means by which his death was to be brought about. An idea entered her mind at length. She went out through the back door of the farmhouse, and called one of the Kroo boys to her. She gave him to understand that he was to act as Kirke's gun bearer on the hunt next day. And then she gave him a few careful instructions in a lowered tone. "Do that," she concluded, ' and I will reward you handsomely — afterward. " The black, with a grin of comprehension, promised to obey her. And then Elsa went back into the house and rejoined Kirke and her other guests. They all left soon after, agreeing to be at the farmhouse an hour before dawn the next morning, to start on the hunt. At the time appointed, they set off. Elsa watched them go, the smile with which she had sped them on their way fading from her lips, which set in their former relentless line zs her eyes rested on Kirke. ■'An e}'e for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth !" she breathed vindictively. "That is no more than just!" The hunting party spread out when the farmhouse had been lost to view, in order to cover a wider range of ground in the search for their prey. Kirke, with his Kroo boy at his heels, was soon out of sight of the others. And then, a hundred feet in front of him, a clump of leaves parted, and a huge male lion reared up his maned head. With a growl, deep in its throat, the king of beasts sprang out on the trail to confront Kirke with bared fangs. He reached coolly behind him and took the loaded rifle from the Kroo boy's hands. Drawing a bead on the lion, he pulled the trigger. The cartridge that had been inserted in the breech was too large for it; it stuck as the hammer came down on it — and the weapon was useless I Glancing back of him, Kirke saw that his black attendant hacP taken to his heels. And then he turned back to face the lion. At that moment it sprang. Kirke bad just time to bring the rifle around in his hands, clubbing it, before the beast was upon him. One of its mighty paws struck his upflung arm, tearing his coat sleeve and that of the shirt beneath it to ribbons. He had stepped to one side, as the lion flung itself upon him, and so the animal had struck him but a glancing blow in passing. It wheeled, even as it struck the ground, to spring for him again. His life at that moment, with the outof-commission gun in his hands, was not worth a penny. And then there was a shot from his rear. The lion turned over in mid-air, its paws outflung, and, with an explo sive roar of mortal anguish, it smote the ground, dead. One of the other members of the hunting party, chancing that way, had dispatched the animal in the nick of time. As he came running up, Kirke, his mangled left arm bathed with crimson from shoulder to hand, collapsed in a dead faint in his tracks. In the meantime, Elsa, back at the farmhouse, had begun to feel remorse for what she had done. She had instructed the Kroo boy, whom she had appointed to act as Kirke's gun bearer, to put a cartridge that was too large for the breech into the rifle when he handed