ever
given him a real licking, and I never will. It would be a waste of time.
He'll fight if you press him too hard. And he'll die fighting you. He's
too sensible to fight if you don't press him too hard. And if you don't
press him too hard, he'll just stay as he is, and refuse to learn
anything. I'd chuck him right now, except Del Mar couldn't make a
mistake. Poor Harry knew he had a specially, and a crackerjack, and it's
up to me to find it."

"Wonder if he's a lion dog," Charles suggested.

"He's the kind that ain't afraid of lions," Collins concurred. "But what
sort of a specially trick could he do with lions? Stick his head in
their mouths? I never heard of a dog doing that, and it's an idea. But
we can try him. We've tried him at 'most everything else."

"There's old Hannibal," said Charles. "He used to take a woman's head in
his mouth with the old Sales-Sinker shows."

"But old Hannibal's getting cranky," Collins objected. "I've been
watching him and trying to get rid of him. Any animal is liable to go
off its nut any time, especially wild ones. You see, the life ain't
natural. And when they do, it's good night. You lose your investment,
and, if you don't know your business, maybe your life."

And Michael might well have been tried out on Hannibal and have lost his
head inside that animal's huge mouth, had not the good fortune of apropos-
ness intervened. For, the next moment, Collins was listening to the
hasty report of his lion-and-tiger keeper. The man who reported was
possibly forty years of age, although he looked half as old again. He
was a withered-faced man, whose face-lines, deep and vertical, looked as
if they had been clawed there by some beast other than himself.

"Old Hannibal is going crazy," was the burden of his report.

"Nonsense," said Harris Collins. "It's you that's getting old. He's got
your goat, that's all. I'll show it to you.--Come on along, all of you.
We'll take fifteen minutes off of the work, and I'll show you a show
never seen in the show-ring. It'd be worth ten thousand a week anywhere
. . . only it wouldn't last. Old Hannibal would turn up his toes out of
sheer hurt feelings.--Come on everybody! All hands! Fifteen minutes
recess!"

And Michael followed at the heels of his latest and most terrible master,
the twain leading the procession of employees and visiting professional
animal men who trooped along behind. As was well known, when Harris
Col