ittle
distance off, he saw a small animal eating some leaves.

"There is my dinner if I can only get it," said Nero to himself. "I must
try and see how much of a hunter I shall make on three legs."

Carefully, as he had been taught by his father and mother, and as he had
done on the night of the big hunt when he had been hurt, Nero began to
creep toward the small animal. And he caught it, too, in spite of his
sore paw.

"Now I feel better!" said Nero, after his meal. "I think it will be all
right to stay out of the cave for a while. I can get along better than
at first, and the hunters do not seem to be around here. I'll go to the
home cave now, and I'll have a great story to tell the others."

But Nero was not going to find it as easy to get home through the jungle
as he had hoped. In the first place, he did not know his way, and, in
the second place, he had to go very slowly. For his paw, though it was
getting better, was not well yet, and sometimes, when he knocked it
against a stone or a tree, it pained him so that he would have to sit
down and rumble and roar and howl. But he did not howl very loudly, for
this might have brought the hunters, who, he feared, might try to shoot
him again.

As I have said, Nero did not know his way back home through the jungle.
It had been dark when he started out with his father on the night-hunt,
and he had not noticed the way they had slunk along. Then, too, Nero
expected his father would be with him to show him the way back. But
something had happened, as you know, to make everything different. And
when Nero ran away from the hunters, and hid in the cave, he had gone
farther and farther away from his own folks and home, though, at the
time, he did not know it.

"If only I can get back to my own cave I'll be all right," thought the
lion boy. "I must try as hard as I can to find my cave. And how I do
wish I could see my father and mother, and Boo and Chet!"

So Nero wandered to and fro in the jungle, now and then stopping to
drink from a pool or a spring, and when he was hungry he hunted small
animals, that he could easily catch. He did not dare to go after big
animals when his paw was so sore.

"If I should see a buffalo now, I'd have to run away from him," thought
Nero. "But when I get well, and bigger and stronger, I'll jump on a
buffalo's back, just as my father did!"

So Nero wandered on and on in the jungle, but he did not find the home
cave for which he was looking