and white like an Epirote bull or a Carthaginian watch-dog. There never was a panther like that."
"Never was, maybe," said Balbinus. "Maybe never will be again, but there is now. Why you must have seen that brute before you left. She's been here for four or five years."
"Five years!" Proculus exclaimed. "Why no animal lasts five years in the Colosseum: few ever fight twice."
"That panther," said Balbinus, "will last ten years. She has a charmed life. She'll die of old age, like as not. She has fought at least two hundred times. And never varies when she is let out. Watch her." And he sat down.
Proculus, reseating himself, watched as he was bid.
"Watch her," Balbinus repeated. "She always makes for that same panel of rollers over there—the set that is so gouged and clawed—and tries to climb up. She never tries any other panel, and she always tries there at least three times."
The panther loped easily across the sands, crouched, sprang vertically and caught the third of the wooden rollers set along the face of the wall to protect spectators from any possibility of any animal scaling the enclosure of the arena. Her claws sank into the wood, but the lurching
