you, Nero?" roared the voice of Mr. Lion through
the black jungle. "What are you howling about?"

"Oh, I'm hurt!" said the lion boy. "I saw a goat and tried to jump on
it. Then I heard some little thunder, and my paw hurt and the goat is
still there."

"Ha! That was a trap!" cried Mr. Lion. "That goat was tied there to a
tree by a rope, so he would bleat and make you come closer. Then a
hunter, hidden in a tree, must have shot you."

And this is exactly what had happened. The hunter knew that a lion would
come close to try to catch the tied goat, when it bleated, and the man
waited.

[Illustration: He licked the place where his paw hurt. _Page 38_]

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 Swit