High.

He reached the window, and with trembling fingers fumbled at the catch, intending to throw the shutters wide open. As he was doing so he became aware of the fact that a confused jumble of mysterious sounds seemed to come floating up to him.

Toby gave his head a shake, as he again took himself to task.

"It's the old dream ahangin' on to me," he thought. "Chances are now that's only a door aswingin' in the breeze, and groanin' to beat the band; yet I'm so filled chuck full of things, because of that book, and my dream, that I'm silly enough to think I'm ahearin' wild animals asnortin' and agruntin'. Bah! get your eyes wide open, Toby Jucklin, and let up with this nonsense."

He flung open the shutters as he came to this part of hauling himself over the coals. Then he crouched there as though transfixed, hardly even drawing in a single breath. All Toby could do was to remain as though changed into a statue, and take it out in staring; though he did want to rub his eyes the worst kind, and see if the magical vision would vanish.

Indeed, there was enough reason for him to stare as though his eyes would pop out of his head. What he gazed upon might make the most sensible person believe he had been taken with a very bad case of nightmare, and was seeing things that could exist only in dreams.

There, right in the same back yard where he had his own private little menagerie Toby was looking down upon the most remarkable collection of wild animals any boy could imagine would drop down from the clouds of a stormy night—two big elephants, and a cunning baby one in the bargain; three dromedaries, with their double humps all in place; an ostrich; a striped zebra, and last but far from least, a cowering tawny form with a shaggy mane in which Toby could recognize the king of the African forest, a male lion!

Who could blame Toby for believing that he was still dreaming as he stared out of the window of his own little second story room, and saw this wonderful array of wild beasts camped in the back yard, where up to then the fiercest captive had been his snarling wildcat, and undersized at that?