[Illus]

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He licked the place where his paw hurt.
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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.