advantage of it to clutch Brinton, drag him to the door, and out of the cage. At this the applause was deafening. It was the first night in this community, and the spectators thought it was in the play. The heart of Rounders turned sick as he heard the admiring shouts. He pulled Brinton into the little tent-chamber; thence he smuggled him into a room in an adjoining hotel. The beast had ripped the flesh from the bone nearly the length of his leg, as the surgeon ascertained, who was secretly called in. Fortunately no bones were broken. Five minutes after the event of the cage, the manager of the concern came before the audience and stated that the celebrated lion-tamer, John Brinton, who had been engaged at a fabulous sum, and had performed before all the crowned heads of Europe, was taken with a sudden indisposition to which he was sometimes subject, and would be obliged to deny himself the pleasure of appearing again that evening. Then he added some remark about the noble beast of the forest, who probably regretted the non-appearance of its master--whom he positively loved, as much as the people before him. After the show was over that night, the manager asked the doctor how long the wounded tamer would keep his bed, to which answer was made that it would be several weeks. The manager did not know what was to be done. Then, turning to Rounders, he said, "There's good stuff in you. Brinton owes you his life. Don't you think you might go into Pompey until Brinton gets on his legs?" (Pompey being the old emasculated lion who appeared to the public in the same cage with Brutus). To which question Rounders, picking up heart of grace, said he thought he might. "I mean," added the manager, "of course, in keeping Brutus out of the cage, and confining your handling to Pompey, who is not a bad-natured animal. Have you got the courage to go into him?" Rounders said he had. "I don't want any foolhardiness," continued the manager. "If you can manage to make Pompey run around the cage a little, that will do until Brinton recovers." A few minutes afterward Rounders was in the room of the wounded tamer, to whom he said: "I'm going in to do the business with Pompey, until you get well." The expression of languid suffering left the face of Brinton, as he asked, "What are you going to do with him?" "Do what you did with him--or try to." "Perhaps you may do it, Rounders." "If I knew the 'meat jerk,' I don't know but I might try that on him." "Look here, Rounders," said the reclining man, "I have a word to say to you. You tried to get Sally Stubbs away from me; for that I didn't like you. But what you have done to-night wipes that out, and puts something to the credit side of your account. This being the case, let me give you this advice: Don't try the 'meat-jerk,' and when you go into Pompey, go at him before he has time to think."