It was tiresome of the
brute. Tom Fool grew more daring and threw little stones at him, but
the panther seemed only to grow the more imperturbable, and to heed
his missiles as little as his grimaces.
At length, proceeding from bad to worse, as is always the way with
fools, born or made, Tom betook himself to stronger measures.
The cages of the wild beasts were in the basement of the kitchen
tower, with a little semicircular yard of their own before them.
They were solid stone vaults, with open fronts grated with huge iron
bars--our ancestors, whatever were their faults, did not err in the
direction of flimsiness. Between two of these bars, then, Tom,
having procured a long pole, proceeded to poke at the beast; but he
soon found that the pole thickened too rapidly towards the end he
held, to pass through the bars far enough to reach him. Thereupon,
in utter fool-hardiness, backed by the groom, he undid the door a
little way, and, his companion undertaking to prevent it from
opening too far, pushed in the pole till it went right in the
creature's face.
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