“What did you do?” asked Mr. Brown and Mr. Jason together.

“Well, I happened to have a broom stick in my hand so I hit him a smart blow over the nose to teach him to let my hens alone, and then I drove the chickens outside and locked the lion in the henhouse.  He’s there now.  You’d better send for the circus folks to take him away.  I don’t want him around the place scaring the fowls.”

“Didn’t he scare you?” asked Mr. Brown.

“I never stopped to think whether he did or not,” was the cool answer.  “I just whacked him over the nose and he whined and cuddled up in a corner like a whipped dog.”

“Oh, let’s go out and look at the lion in the chicken coop!” cried Bunny.

“No, indeed,” said his father.  “Wait until the circus men come and put him in the cage.”

A neighboring farmer had a telephone, and word was sent to one of the circus men who had stayed at the village hotel, while his companion had gone to the rocky glen with a crowd of men and boys to try to find the lion there, after the alarm given by Mr. Jason.

The circus man, who had remained in the hotel, came with a light cage, drawn by horses, and the lion was easily driven from the henhouse into the cage and was soon safe behind locks and bars.

“Mrs. Jason caught the lion!” cried the crowd that gathered to watch what happened.

“Did he bite you?” she was asked.

“Never a bite,” she answered smiling.

“What!  Poor old Tobyhanna bite?” cried one of the circus men.  “Why, he hasn’t but two teeth in his head and we have to feed him on boiled meat.  He’s no more dangerous than a tame dog, and when you hit him over the nose with your broom, lady, you must have hurt his feelin’s dreadful.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to be rough,” said Mrs. Jason with a smile, “but it’s the first time I ever caught a lion.”

“Yes, and you get the reward, too,” added the circus man, as he paid the farmer’s wife.

Then he started away with the lion in the cage to ship him back to the circus.  And poor, old, almost toothless Tobyhanna, curled up in the corner of his cage and ate some bread and milk the farmer’s wife gave him.  He was happy he had been caught.

Fred Ward’s story was soon told.  After running away from home he joined the medicine show, because it gave him a chance to play the banjo he liked so well.  He left Dr. Perry because he saw the Browns and feared they might have him sent home.

Then he joined the circus, the very one from which the lion had escaped.  In that show Fred had been one of a group who blacked up and played on mandolins and guitars and banjos, and though he had played in front of Bunny, Sue and Uncle Tad, none of them knew him, nor did Fred see them.

The night the show left the town, and just before the lion escaped, Fred had a quarrel with one of the managers and left.  He was not paid his money and, quite miserable, he wandered away, not knowing what to do.  He became lost in the woods, and finally he reached the rocky gulch where the lion attacked him.