hing, found its
way to the cages of an animal-trainer in the East.

CHAPTER II

"King's kind of ugly to-night, seems to me; better keep yer eyes
peeled!" said Andy Hansen, the assistant trainer, the big,
yellow-haired Swede who knew not fear. Neither did he know impatience
or irritability; and so all the animals, as a rule, were on their good
behavior under his calm, masterful, blue eye. Yet he was tactful with
the beasts, and given to humoring their moods as far as convenient
without ever letting them guess it.

"Oh, you go chase yourself, Andy!" replied Signor Tomaso, the trainer,
with a strong New England accent. "If I got to look out for King, I'd
better quit the business. Don't you go trying to make trouble between
friends, Andy."

"Of course, Bill, I know he'd never try to maul _you_," explained
Hansen seriously, determined that he should not be misunderstood in
the smallest particular. "But he's acting curious. Look out he don't
get into a scrap with some of the other animals."

"I reckon I kin keep 'em all straight," answered the trainer dryly, as
he turned away to get ready for the great performance which the
audience, dimly heard beyond the canvas walls, was breathlessly
awaiting.

The trainer's name was William Sparks, and his birthplace Big
Chebeague, Maine; but his lean, swarthy face and piercing, green-brown
eyes, combined with the craving of his audiences for a touch of the
romantic, had led him to adopt the more sonorous pseudonym of "Signor
Tomaso." He maintained that if he went under his own name, nobody
would ever believe that what he did could be anything wonderful.
Except for this trifling matter of the name, there was no fake about
Signor Tomaso. He was a brilliant animal-trainer, as unacquainted with
fear as the Swede, as dominant of eye, and of immeasurably greater
experience. But being, at the same time, more emotional, more
temperamental than his phlegmatic assistant, his control was sometimes
less steady, and now and again he would have to assert his authority
with violence. He was keenly alive to the varying personalities of his
beasts, naturally, and hence had favorites among them. His especial
favorite, who heartily reciprocated the attachment, was the great
puma, King, the most intelligent and amiable of all the wild animals
that had ever come under his training whip.

As Hansen's success with the animals, during the few months of his
experience as assistant, had been alt