m talking,
though he did not, of course, know what they were saying. But he could
smell the rotten apple. Often, in the jungle, he had smelled bad fruit,
and he knew that the monkeys would not eat it.

"If bad fruit isn't good for monkeys it isn't good for elephants,"
thought Nero, as he saw the boy hold out the rotten apple toward Tum
Tum, the jolly elephant.

Tum Tum reached out his trunk to take what he thought was something
good, but Nero roared, in animal language, of course:

"Don't take that apple, Tum Tum! It's bad!" And then Nero sprang against
the bars of his cage, and, reaching out a paw, with its long, sharp
claws, made a grab for the boy's arm as he held out the rotten apple.

"Look out! The lion's going to bite you!" cried a man to the boy, and
the boy was so frightened that he gave a howl and dropped the rotten
apple and ran through the crowd, knocking to the right and left every
one in his way.

Nero roared again and dashed against the bars of his cage, and while
women and children screamed and men shouted, Nero's keeper and some of
the other animal men ran up to see what the matter was. There was great
excitement in the circus tent.

CHAPTER X

NERO RUNS AWAY

Once more Nero roared as he looked over the heads of the crowd to see
what had become of the boy who had tried to give Tum Tum the rotten
apple.

"Hold on there, my lion boy! What's the matter? Don't do that!" called
Nero's trainer to him in a kind voice. "What happened, anyhow? Why are
you roaring so, and trying to get out of your cage? Don't you like it
here in the circus?"

Nero stopped roaring at once, and no longer dashed against the bars of
his cage. Perhaps he thought that, as long as his kind trainer was at
hand, everything would be all right.

"Did some one try to hurt my lion friend?" asked the trainer, looking at
the crowd near the cage.

"No," some one answered. "But the lion, all at once, tried to reach out
and claw a boy who was going to give an apple to an elephant. I saw
that. I don't know what made the lion act so."

"There must have been some good reason," said the trainer. "Nero is a
good lion. He wouldn't want to claw a boy just for fun."

And then one of the other boys, who was in the crowd that had been
around the lad who had the rotten apple, spoke up and said:

"Mister, Jimmie was going to play a trick on the elephant. He was going
to give him a bad apple just to see what a funny face the elephan