might go through a particular movement ten times, he went

hundreds. Also, as a compromise, he built a sleeping porch on
the second story. Here he at least breathed the blessed night

air. Double screens prevented him from escaping into the woods,
and each night Lee Sing locked him in and each morning let him

out.
The time came, in the month of August, when he engaged

additional servants to assist Lee Sing and dared a house party
in his Mill Valley bungalow. Lilian, her mother and brother,

and half a dozen mutual friends, were the guests. For two days
and nights all went well. And on the third night, playing

bridge till eleven o'clock, he had reason to be proud of
himself. His restlessness fully hid, but as luck would have it,

Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his right. She was a frail
delicate flower of a woman, and in his night-mood her very

frailty incensed him. Not that he loved her less, but that he
felt almost irresistibly impelled to reach out and paw and maul

her. Especially was this true when she was engaged in playing a
winning hand against him.

He had one of the deer-hounds brought in and, when it seemed he
must fly to pieces with the tension, a caressing hand laid on

the animal brought him relief. These contacts with the hairy
coat gave him instant easement and enabled him to play out the

evening. Nor did anyone guess the while terrible struggle their
host was making, the while he laughed so carelessly and played

so keenly and deliberately.
When they separated for the night, he saw to it that he parted

from Lilian in the presence or the others. Once on his sleeping
porch and safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even

quadrupled his exercises until, exhausted, he lay down on the
couch to woo sleep and to ponder two problems that especially

troubled him. One was this matter of exercise. It was a
paradox. The more he exercised in this excessive fashion, the

stronger he became. While it was true that he thus quite tired
out his night-running Teutonic self, it seemed that he was

merely setting back the fatal day when his strength would be
too much for him and overpower him, and then it would be a

strength more terrible than he had yet known. The other problem
was that of his marriage and of the stratagems he must employ

in order to avoid his wife after dark. And thus, fruitlessly
pondering, he fell asleep.

Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from that night was long
a mystery, while the people of the Springs Brothers' Circus,

showing at Sausalito, searched long and vainly for "Big Ben,
the Biggest Grizzly in Captivity." But Big Ben escaped, and,

out of the mazes of half a thousand bungalows and country
estates, selected the grounds of James J. Ward for visitation.

The self first Mr. Ward knew was when he found him on his feet,
quivering and tense, a surge of battle in his breast and on his

lips the old war-chant. From without came a wild baying and
bellowing of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust through

the pandemonium came the agony of a stricken dog--his dog, he
knew.

Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he burst through the
door Lee Sing had so carefully locked, and sped down the stairs

and out into the night. As his naked feet struck the graveled
driveway, he stopped abruptly, reached under the steps to a

hiding-place he knew well, and pulled forth a huge knotty
club--his old companion on many a mad night adventure on the

hills. The frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming nearer,
and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the thickets to

meet it.
The aroused household assembled on the wide veranda. Somebody

turned on the electric lights, but they could see nothing but
one another's frightened faces. Beyond the brightly illuminated

driveway the trees formed a wall of impenetrable blackness. Yet
somewhere in that blackness a terrible struggle was going on.

There was an infernaloutcry of animals, a great snarling and
growling, the sound of blows being struck and a smashing and

crashing of underbrush by heavy bodies.
The tide of battle swept out from among the trees and upon the

driveway just beneath the onlookers. Then they saw. Mrs.
Gersdale cried out and clung fainting to her son. Lilian,

clutching the railing so spasmodically that a bruising hurt was
left in her finger-ends for days, gazed horror-stricken at a

yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant whom she recognized as the man
who was to be her husband. He was swinging a great club, and

fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggymonster that was
bigger than any bear she had ever seen. One rip of the beast's

claws had dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked his
flesh with blood.

While most of Lilian Gersdale's fright was for the man beloved,
there was a large portion of it due to the man himself. Never

had she dreamed so formidable and magnificent a savage lurked
under the starched shirt and conventional garb of her

betrothed. And never had she had any conception of how a man
battled. Such a battle was certainly not modern; nor was she

there beholding a modern man, though she did not know it. For
this was not Mr. James J. Ward, the San Francisco business man,

but one, unnamed and unknown, a crude, rude savage creature
who, by some freak of chance, lived again after thrice a

thousand years.
The hounds, ever maintaining their mad uproar, circled about

the fight, or dashed in and out, distracting the bear. When the
animal turned to meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in

and the club came down. Angered afresh by every such blow, the
bear would rush, and the man, leaping and skipping, avoiding

the dogs, went backwards or circled to one side or the other.
Whereupon the dogs, takingadvantage of the opening, would

again spring in and draw the animal's wrath to them.
The end came suddenly. Whirling, the grizzly caught a hound

with a wide sweeping cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved
in and its back broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the human

brute went mad. A foaming rage flecked the lips that parted
with a wild inarticulate cry, as it sprang in, swung the club

mightily in both hands, and brought it down full on the head of
the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a grizzly could

withstand the crushing force of such a blow, and the animal
went down to meet the worrying of the hounds. And through their

scurrying leaped the man, squarely upon the body, where, in the
white electric light, resting on his club, he chanted a triumph

in an unknown tongue--a song so ancient that Professor Wertz
would have given ten years of his life for it.

His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim him, but James
Ward, suddenly looking out of the eyes of the early Teuton, saw

the fair frail Twentieth Century girl he loved, and felt
something snap in his brain. He staggered weakly toward her,

dropped the club, and nearly fell. Something had gone wrong
with him. Inside his brain was an intolerable agony. It seemed

as if the soul of him were flying asunder. Following the
excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass

of the bear. The sight filled him with fear. He uttered a cry
and would have fled, had they not restrained him and led him

into the bungalow.
. . . . . .

James J. Ward is still at the head of the firm of Ward, Knowles
& Co. But he no longer lives in the country; nor does he run of

nights after the coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in
him died the night of the Mill Valley fight with the bear.

James J. Ward is now wholly James J. Ward, and he shares no
part of his being with any vagabond anachronism from the

younger world. And so wholly is James J. Ward modern, that he
knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized fear.

He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him
a thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and