. Here and there wandered the boy lion,
always hoping that he might find some animal path that would lead him
home. But he did not. Day after day passed, and Nero was no nearer home
than at first.

Then he began to know what had happened.

"I am lost!" he thought. "I have lost my way. I must ask some of the
jungle animals how to get home."

But this was not easy. Most of the jungle animals were afraid of the
lion, though he was not yet full grown, and when he roared at them, to
ask where his cave was, they thought he was trying to scare them or
catch them, and they ran away.

The larger animals, like the elephants, who went about in herds, and who
were not afraid of one lion who was all alone, did not bother to answer
Nero, or else they said they knew nothing of his home.

"Do you know where I live?" asked poor, lost Nero of the monkeys he saw
hopping about in the trees. "Where is my home cave? And where are Boo
and Chet?"

"We don't know," answered the monkeys. "All we know is that we sit in
the trees and eat coconuts when we can get them. We never saw your
cave, and, besides, we don't like lions, anyhow."

Poor Nero did not know what to do, so he wandered on, eating when he
could, and drinking when he came to a pool or a spring.

"If I could only meet some other lions one of them would take me home,"
he thought.

But the part of the jungle where Nero now was did not seem to have any
lions in it except himself. By this time his paw was nearly well, and he
could run about almost as fast as at first.

Once Nero came to a spring when he was very thirsty, and, as he was
drinking, having driven away a lot of monkeys who were taking up the
water in their paws and sipping it, all at once he felt himself knocked
over as he had been knocked by the crocodile that time.

"Here! Who's doing that?" asked Nero, as he got up from the dust, where
he had been knocked. "Who did that?"

"I did!" answered a loud voice, and, looking toward the spring, Nero saw
an animal the color of an elephant, but not half as large. And on the
end of his nose, or snout, the animal had two sharp horns, not as long,
though, as the tusks of an elephant.

"Oh, so you knocked me away from the spring, did you?" asked Nero.

"Yes, I did," was the answer. "Don't you know better than to drink
before me?"

"Who are you?" asked Nero.

"I am the two-horned rhinoceros," was the answer. "And the only jungle
folk who can drink with me, or before me