Filled by despair, he had lain down to die, but here was a new-born hope, not clear, not exact as words might put it, but his conqueror had shown himself a friend; this seemed a new hope, and the keeper, taking up the old call, “Honey, Jacky—­honey!” pushed the comb till it touched his muzzle.  The smell was wafted to his sense, its message reached his brain; hope honored, it must awake response.  The great tongue licked the comb, appetite revived, and thus in newborn Hope began the chapter of his gloom.

Skilful keepers were there with plans to meet the Monarch’s every want.  Delicate foods were offered and every shift was tried to tempt him back to strength and prison life.

He ate and—­lived.

And still he lives, but pacing—­pacing—­pacing—­you may see him, scanning not the crowds, but something beyond the crowds, breaking down at times into petulant rages, but recovering anon his ponderous dignity, looking—­waiting—­watching—­held ever by that Hope, that unknown Hope, that came.  Kellyan has been to him since, but Monarch knows him not.  Over his head, beyond him, was the great Bear’s gaze, far away toward Tallac or far away on the sea, we knowing not which or why, but pacing—­pacing—­pacing—­held like the storied Wandering One to a life of ceaseless journey—­a journey aimless, endless, and sad.

The wound-spots long ago have left his shaggy coat, but the earmarks still are there, the ponderous strength, the elephantine dignity.  His eyes are dull,—­never were bright,—­but they seem not vacant, and most often fixed on the Golden Gate where the river seeks the sea.

The river, born in high Sierra’s flank, that lived and rolled and grew, through mountain pines, o’erleaping man-made barriers, then to reach with growing power the plains and bring its mighty flood at last to the Bay of Bays, a prisoner there to lie, the prisoner of the Golden Gate, seeking forever Freedom’s Blue, seeking and raging—­raging and seeking—­back and forth, forever—­in vain.

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