he cage. When Rounders explained to
him what he wanted, the tamer said:

"You've got it."

"Got what?"

"The lion fever. You are lion struck. I've seen a good many like you.
Its an uphill business. Not one keeper in fifty gets the handling of the
brutes, and still the only way of going about it is to be a keeper.
Besides handling them, you must have a _specialty_--a trick, you know.
You've got to get up one yourself or worm it out of somebody else. As
for the lion man telling anybody--that is something I haven't yet met
with. You may take his life, but he won't give up his trick; it's his
pride, his pleasure, and his bread and butter."

"I want to be a keeper all the same," returned Rounders.

"Come on then," said Brinton; "for we want a keeper, as we left one at
the last town. He was a young man who had been reading in natural
history about the noble nature of the lion, and he put his hand in
between the bars to pat Brutus on the head. The surgeon examined him,
and said his arm was fractured in several places--it was a regular chaw.
We left him in the hospital. I tell you this as a warning not to go
fooling round the beasts--that is, if you're coming."

The fate of the young man of a too trusting faith in the noble nature of
the lion did not turn Rounders from his determination, and the next
morning he was a part of the establishment.

At first the tongue of the tamer was pretty closely tied touching
matters of his profession, but in due time he expanded into talk when he
saw the genuine enthusiasm of the keeper for all that related to the
subject, yet naturally practised strict reserve in everything concerning
his particular work. In a word, professional secrets remained entombed.

He thought men were born to his vocation, and there was no resisting it.
He had followed shows and hung around lion cages when he was a boy.
Toward manhood the business had exercised such a fascination that he at
last obtained employment with a tamer, whom he followed until he was
killed by his beasts. This sanguinary spectacle deterred him for the
time from the idea of entering a cage, but he continued his work.

There were two kinds of lions in the menageries--those born and raised
in the cages and those caught as whelps wild in Asia and Africa. A few
full grown were caught in pits. The first time he entered a cage was in
a small show in a provincial town. The two lions whom he then
encountered were old and sick, and bore the sc