class="center">He licked the place where his paw hurt.
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Then, when the man, hiding on a platform built in a tree, saw Nero, as the moon shone now and then, he fired his big rifle. But he did not kill a lion, as he thought. He only made Nero lame in one paw, and as the lion boy rolled away as quickly as he could the man lost sight of him. And though he and some other hunters who were with him tried later to find Nero, they could not. He had run away; and I will tell you how he did it.

"Come, lions!" called Nero's father to the hunting band, when Nero had told what had happened to him. "Come, we must not hunt here any longer. If one hunter shot Nero, other hunters may shoot at us. We had better hunt somewhere else. Come, we will run away. The jungle is big enough for us to hide from the hunters. But, before we go, we will give a loud roar so the hunters will know we are not afraid. All ready now, my brothers. Roar! Roar! Roar!"

And how those lions roared! You could have heard them a mile away, for they all roared at once, and the ground fairly trembled. Even Nero, hurt as he was, helped in the roaring.

"Come on now, Nero! Follow us!" called Mr. Lion to the boy cub who was shot. "You will have to run on three legs, but you have done that before. You did it once when you got a big thorn in your paw. Come along, follow us and we will hunt in another part of the jungle."

So the lion band turned away from the place where the goat was tied and where the hunters were hidden, and Nero followed. But it was not easy for the cub lion, and soon he began to limp and fall behind.

"What's the matter?" asked Switchie, as he saw that his chum was not keeping up with the rest. "Can't you run along faster?"

"No, I can't," answered Nero. "And I guess you couldn't either, on only three legs."

"Well, maybe I couldn't," replied Switchie. "I'm sorry you were shot, Nero. I'll stay behind and walk with you. Then you won't be lonesome."

"Thank you," answered Nero, using lion talk, of course.

So Switchie stayed behind with Nero, going slowly, as the wounded lion had to go. But soon the others—the big and little lions who were not hurt began to get far ahead.

"Come on, Nero! Come on!" they roared. "And you too, Switchie! Come along here! Hurry up!"

"I'll just run on ahead and see what they want," said Switchie to Nero. "I'll tell them you can't go fast, and that they must wait for us. I'll run up ahead and tell them this, and then come back here to you."

"All right, thank you, I wish you would," growled Nero, and he did not feel very happy, for his paw hurt him very much. "I'll wait here for you," he said, as he sat down on a pile of leaves.

So Switchie ran on ahead to tell the others. But while he was gone something happened that changed Nero's whole life, and really was the cause of his going to a circus.

I'll tell you about it.

As Nero sat on the pile of leaves, waiting for his friend Switchie to come back, he suddenly heard a noise in the jungle behind him. He saw some lights flashing and he heard the sound of talk. It was the voices of men—the same sort of voice that had shouted:

"I have shot a lion!"

Nero pricked up his ears and listened as hard as he could.

"Those are hunters!" said the boy lion to himself. "They are coming after me! I must run away and hide! I can't wait for Switchie to come back! I must hide!"

As I have said, the moon now and then shone in the jungle, making it light enough for men to see to shoot. But the lights Nero saw flashing were not moonbeams. They came from lanterns carried by the hunters.

"Here is a mark where a lion has been!" cried one hunter, flashing his light. "This must be the one I shot! Come on, we'll get him yet!"

And these were the voices Nero heard. The wounded lion boy did not wait any longer. Up he sprang, and, running on three legs, and making no noise, off through the dark jungle he hurried. His only idea was to get away and hide.

Suddenly Nero saw a blacker patch in the half darkness. He knew at once what it was. It was the opening, or front door, of a cave.

"It isn't the cave where I live," thought the lion boy, "but it will do very well for me to hide in."

So Nero crawled into the cave with his sore paw, and lay down on some dried grass, as far back as he could get. And the hunters, with their guns and lanterns, came on through the jungle, looking for a lion to kill.

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CHAPTER V

NERO IN A TRAP

Tramp, tramp, tramp came the hunters through the jungle, flashing their lights and looking for the lion which one of them had shot while the hunter was hidden on the platform in a tree. But Nero, cowering away back in the dark cave, kept very still and quiet, and he heard the hunters walk right past his hiding place.

"Good!" thought the boy lion. "They haven't found me! I'm all right so far; but I wonder how long I will have to stay here, and what the other lions will do."

Poor Nero felt sick and in pain, and he was lonesome. It's as bad, I think, for a jungle lion to be this way as it would be for your dog. But still Nero did not dare come out of the cave for fear of the hunters.

"I'll just have to stay here," thought Nero, "until it's safe to come out. Guess I might as well go to sleep."

So Nero curled up on the dried grass in the cave. He knew some other lion once must have used the same cave for a sleeping place, as the grass bed was made up just as Nero's was in the home cave.

"It's a good thing I found this place," thought Nero. "But I wish my father and mother and Chet and Boo were here with me. Yes, and I even wish Switchie were here. I wonder what he is doing!"

And so, wondering, Nero fell asleep in the jungle cave. How long he slept he did not know, for it was as dark as night in the cavern, no matter whether or not the sun shone outside, and Nero was far back from the front door of the cave. When Nero awakened he tried to stand up and walk.

But the moment he put his sore paw down on the stone floor of the cave, he felt such a pain that he let out a howl and then a roar. But as soon as he had done this he knew he had better keep quiet.

"For the hunters may be around the cave yet, outside, and may hear me," thought Nero. "But, oh, how my foot hurts!"

And indeed it did, for it was all swelled up because of the bullet that had gone in from the hunter's gun. Nero could not step on his paw, and he had to limp around on three legs.

"I can't go out of the cave while I'm this way," he thought. "I could not run very fast through the jungle, and if the hunters were to see me, lame as I am, they surely would catch me."

Nero knew something about the hunters in the African jungle, for he had often heard his father and the other lions talk about the men with guns. Some of the older lions had even been shot at, and one or two of them had scars on them, to show where the bullets had gone in. But the shot places had