Hearing no answer from her companion, Miss Temple turned her head, and beheld Louisa, standing with her face whitened to the colour of death, and her finger pointing upward, with a sort of flickering, convulsed motion. The quick eye of Elizabeth glanced in the direction indicated by her friend, where she saw the fierce front and glaring eyes of a female panther, fixed on them in horrid malignity, and threatening instant destruction.
'Let us fly!' exclaimed Elizabeth, grasping the hand of Louisa, whose form yielded like melting snow, and sunk lifeless to the earth.
There was not a single feeling in the temperament of Elizabeth Temple that could prompt her to desert a companion in such an extremity; and she fell on her knees, by the side of the inanimate Louisa, tearing from the person of her friend, with an instinctive readiness, such parts of her dress as might obstruct her respiration, and encouraging their only safeguard, the dog, at the same time, by the sounds of her voice.
'Courage, Brave!' she cried, her own tones beginning to tremble; 'courage, courage, good Brave!'
A quarter-grown cub, that had hitherto been unseen, now appeared dropping from the branches of a sapling, that grew under the shade of the beech which held its dam, This ignorant, but vicious creature approached near the dog, imitating the actions and sounds of its parent,
