the wrong end. You
don't know much about lion nature, and you want to do the high art in
the profession on sight. A man must creep before he can walk. Now, you
tried to begin by walking, and you know what came of it."

This was a specimen of a bit of the talk given for the benefit and
guidance of the lion-tamer _en herbe_, and by the time Brinton got
through with his advice, his words had a salutary effect, at least for
the time being.

There was a smouldering gleam of vengeance in the eye of Brinton when he
entered the cage for the first time after his accident, which brightened
almost into a flame as he bore down on Brutus with the hot rod. He
persistently thrust it at him; the great cog-wheel growls issued from
his throat, and he tried to break down the rod with his paw; then he
ingloriously fled around the cage as Brinton chased him with his whip.
This was accompanied with curses low but intense, which would have
shocked the Christian spectators of the assembly had they heard them.

In playing the drama, Brinton took the precaution to have put in the
centre of the cage, as part of the decorations, a stump of a tree, which
was hollow, and contained a navy revolver and a bowie-knife. When he
gave the command to Brutus to leap forward against the spears, Brinton
stood alongside of the stump with one hand inside of it, his forefinger
playing with the trigger of the revolver. The apprehension of a
recurrence of the critical scene which has been narrated was however
groundless. Brutus dutifully leaped forward and smashed the brittle
spears, without hesitation, and calmly suffered himself to be embraced
as a "noble beast" afterward.

The "meat-jerk" was given with the success which usually characterized
it in the hands of Brinton, the applause being enthusiastic.

"And yet," said Rounders to Miss Stubbs, as they both stood looking at
the performance, "he does it just as I tried to do it. How easy and
natural! As he says, it's high art."

"I don't think it's anything to be compared to standin' on my
cream-colored horse and jumping through the balloons."

"Ah, Sally Stubbs, we can't see these things with the same eyes," said
Rounders, with a sigh.

Miss Stubbs noted that sigh as she had the other sighs to which Rounders
gave himself over ever since his failure. She was persuaded that the man
was incorrigible, unless that particular mystery was unfolded to him.

One day, as the caravan wound the shoulder of a steep