up
missing just when you are most wanted." As he said this he caught
hold of the piece of rope around Billy's neck that Billy had
broken when he took his somersault, and said: "Come along with
me. I am going to put you for once where you can't get out, no
matter how hard you bite, chew or kick."

"I wonder what he is going to do with me," thought Billy.

But he soon found out, for the man led him to a vacant cage that
a wild cat had died in the day before, and made him walk up an
inclined board into it.

"Heavens!" thought Billy, "I'll never get out of here unless I
die and am carried out like the wild cat was, and if I don't die
I know I will go crazy, shut up in a little cooped up place like
this, with only room enough to take one step and not enough to
turn around unless you turn yourself in sections."

"Well, Billy, how do you like being caged?" asked the animal
keeper.

"Yes, you vicious beast, you, how do you like being shut up where
you can't butt and send people flying into mud-puddles and chew
up their wigs, etc.?" asked the ring-master who had joined the
animal keeper.

"Oh, it is you, is it? Well, you just wait until I get out of
here and see where I will butt you next time, and the animal
keeper, too," bleated Billy, but neither of them understood what
he said.

When they left him alone Billy tried every way he could think of
to break out, but he could make no impression on the iron bars,
chew as he would,--in fact, he broke one of his teeth trying.
Then he tried butting out the ends of the cage, but it was of no
use. Next he stood on his hind legs and tried to push the roof
off with his long horns, but to no effect; so he lay down tired
and broken-hearted on the hard bottom of the cage and gave
himself up to the blues.

He was lying there quietly, apparently asleep, when a man brought
him a bundle of hay to eat, a bucket of water to drink and a
pitch-fork of straw to lie on.

Billy did not move when they brought the things, pretending to be
asleep, but he was rudely awakened out of his supposed sleep by
the man sticking the prongs of the pitch-fork into him to make
him get up so he could spread the straw on the bottom of the
cage. He felt too disheartened to eat, especially food which he
detested, but thought he would take a drink as he was very
thirsty, but at one smell of the bucket he turned up his
aristocratic nose for he detected the bucket had not been washed
since it had been used by