Apollo had certainly behaved in a most creditable manner, and I was ready to admit that he deserved all the good that his master could do for him. As for the lion, I supposed nothing more was seen or heard of him.
“You are mistaken there,” said Hutton. “I have the best part of him now at my house. I had an account to settle with the rascal for the horrid torture I had suffered through him. Besides, as he was evidently a ‘man-eater,’ it would not have done to leave him at large, if I could help it. I was sure he would not quit the pool so long as the oxen remained near it; and as I knew that two other traders, Johnson and Le Roux, were only a day or two behind me, I waited till they came up, and we all went out together, with our people and dogs. We hunted for two days before we could manage to turn the old cannibal out of his den, among some rocks and bushes. Johnson happened to be nearest to him, and bowled him over at a long shot. A capital shot it was, too; the ball went in behind the right shoulder and came out under the left flank. I gave Johnson five pounds for the skin, which I mean to have stuffed and set up at home, in memory of the day I passed with the living owner, and the day after. The first I consider to have been the most miserable day, and the other the happiest, that I have ever spent in all my life.”
Dear Aunt--My good mistress has had an invitation to a place--they call it by the name of Cranley Hurst: that is, the invitation did not come from her cousin, but from her cousin’s brother’s wife, who was gone to keep house for her cousin during what she called “her LITTLE ELECTION.” My mistress said she had never been at “Cranley Hurst” since she was a girl, and she had heard that her cousin, the Hon. Francis Cranley (who, for some cause or another, had shut himself up, when a fine young gentleman, all as one as a hermit) had been routed like a hare out of its form, by his little sister-in-law, who pounced down upon him, now and again, like a hawk, scaring and tearing and domineering wherever she went. My poor mistress was a long time what they call temporizing whether she would go or not, when--I am sure it was to her surprise--she got a letter from the Honorable Francis himself. “He says,” says she, “that it’s the first invitation he has given to any living creature to pass the threshold of Cranley Hurst for five-and-twenty years, and he hopes I will give his sister-in-law, Mrs. James Cranley, the pleasure to receive me, and that he himself would be happy to see me in the old place once more.”