MAX RANDER'S WILD TIGER.

BY MATTHEW WHITE, JUN.

I didn't like that little French village. Thad and I were at our wits' end to find some way to amuse ourselves. There wasn't any river to row on, nor any hills to climb, and not a single person we could talk to out of the family.

Then you sort of felt as if you were a lunatic in an asylum; for instead of fences, every house had a high stone wall around it; that is, every house except the one where we boarded, which was surrounded by an iron railing, with the bars just far enough apart to make it look like a cage in a menagerie. At least this is what Thad said it reminded him of, and sometimes I used to see him tearing up and down behind it, playing he was an African lion. I didn't tell him it was silly, because once in a while I turned panther myself. It was an awfully poky town.

About three times every day Thad and I used to beg father to go somewhere else, but he always said, "Have patience, boys." I wonder if anybody ever counted the number of times fathers and mothers say, "Have patience"? If it's as tiresome to say as it is to listen to, I feel sorry for them.

Well, one morning when they both were out driving, and the landlady had gone to market, and there was nobody at home but the French cook and us boys, I was that sorry for Thad, not to mention how awfully dull I was myself, that I felt I must do something. So I called Thad down-stairs, and told him I'd invent a new play for him.

"We can use the fence just the same for a cage," I explained, "and you're to be a tiger a keeper's trying to tame. I'll be the keeper, and at first you must snap at me through the bars; but I'll look you straight in the eye all the time (that's the way keepers do), and then all of a sudden I'll open the door, rush into the cage, and you'll be tamed."

Thad said that would be fun, and then I got father's cane, and we both went out into the front yard. Hardly anybody ever walked on that street, so I wasn't afraid of being interrupted.

I went outside, shutting the gate behind me, and Thad having curled himself up close to the railing, pretending to be asleep, I began operations by poking him with my stick.

At first he only gave a low growl (I wasn't sure whether tigers growled or howled, but I told him a growl would do); but when the cane slipped and tickled him under the arm, he jumped up, and neither growled nor howled, but screamed, until I was obliged to remind him that he wasn't a wild-cat.

"But tickling's no fair," he cried, still squirming a little.

"All right," I answered, beginning my taming operations, and keeping my eye on him in a way that I think really began to frighten him.

Then he started racing up and down inside the fence, I after him on the outside, until we were both quite out of breath, and then he stood still, and snapped at me between the bars.

We were right by the gate, and while he had his head out, pretending to gnaw my stick, I suddenly let go of it, and slipping through the gateway, rushed up behind him before you could say "Jack Robinson."

"Now you must turn around, and we'll look at each other for a minute, and then you'll give in," I cried, making believe crowd into a corner of the cage.

"But I can't turn round," exclaimed Thad. "I can't get my head out."

"Why, how did you get it in, then?" I replied, stepping up to examine into matters. "Twist it the other way."

Thad thereupon obediently gave a fresh tug, but all in vain; his head remained stuck between the bars like a cow's in the patent stalls.

I was scared then, and never thinking about tigers, took him by the neck, and tried my best to get him free; but I couldn't. Then he set up a very unbeastlike yell, which brought the French cook out of the house, with a bunch of garlic in her hand.

When she saw what had happened, she screamed louder than Thad. The noise they both made together was something frightful, while I ran first one side of the fence, then the other, wondering dismally if we'd have to live in that town always because Thad couldn't get his head out.

If we'd had any neighbors except a deaf old man, a woman who never left her bed, and two young men who went to work three miles away, I suppose we'd soon have had a crowd around us, but as it was, nobody appeared but a little girl with a hunk of bread, the sight of which caused Thad to stop hollowing, and declare that we must bring him something to eat.

When I had opened and shut my mouth several times, pointing my finger down it and then at Thad, the cook comprehended what was wanted, and rushing outside of the fence, put that bunch of garlic right under my brother's nose.

"Pah!" he exclaimed, and wrenched his head back so suddenly that I half expected to see both his ears drop off.

"Oh dear," I groaned, "if he can't free himself with such a jerk as that we can never get him out at all."

Then recollecting that Thad hated the smell of garlic as much as I did, and seeing that the cook was still trying to feed him with it, I motioned sternly toward the house, and ordered her to "departez," which wasn't hard to say, as you just take an English word and put a little French end to it.

She understood me at once, and seemed to feel quite insulted, for she walked straight back to the kitchen, slamming the gate after her.

The next minute somebody slapped me on the shoulder, and turning, I jumped as if I had seen a ghost, for it was Thad, and I was at least five feet from the fence. You see, when the gate was open the space between those two particular bars was a little smaller than when it was shut. Thad and I might have remained in that pickle for any length of time, he screaming at the top of his voice, and I dancing around him in agony. Who knows how long it would have taken us to find out that all we had to do was to shut the gate, if that woman hadn't got mad and given it such an awful slam?