The leopard walked leisurely, but steadily.

Softly the footsteps of Timokles and the beast sounded in the room, one footfall answering another.

Backward, backward, went Timokles--now a turn of a corner--backward, backward.
Another corner.

This was the wall by which the leopard had slept.
Backward, backward! The lad could not pause, but now, as he neared the end of the wall and looked up once beyond the leopard, Timokles saw, in the dark corner that he had passed, what he had not before noticed when near enough to see it, as he had not before lifted his eyes from the leopard.

In that farther, dark corner there was a darker line that marked the wall for some distance from the roof.
Timokles dimly perceived that the line was part of one of the old palm branches, that, years ago, had been laid across the split date tree that formed the roof's beam.