base his regard for his new
acquaintances upon such qualities as good breeding, intelligence, and a
cordial yet discriminating hospitality,--qualities which he was
perfectly familiar with at home.

He sometimes wondered whether the taint of civilization might not
already have attached itself to the grizzly bear and the mountain lion,
for whose inspiring acquaintance he had ardently pined since boyhood. He
was on the eve of going to pay his respects to these worthies in their
own mountain fastnesses, and, meanwhile, was getting himself in training
by walking great distances with a rifle over his shoulder.

In the course of the last of his extended tramps--for he was due to join
that inveterate sportsman, Lord Longshot, at Denver, on the following
day,--he found himself passing through a wilderness of loveliness. He
had entered what he would have termed, with the genial inaccuracy of his
race, a "boundless enclosure," and having crossed a vast, yellowish
field, populous with scrawny cattle and self-important prairie-dogs, he
was following a well-marked road, which led alluringly up hill.
Thousands of scrub-oaks, in every shade of bronze and russet, massed
themselves on either hand, and in among them tufts of yellow asters
shone, and here and there a belated gilia tossed its feathery plume.
Scattered groups of pine trees that scorn the arid plains were lording
it over the bolder slopes of the mountain side. The steep road went on
its winding way, after the manner of its kind, dipping occasionally to
meet a bridge of planks, beneath which flowed a stream of autumn colors.
After a while Sir Bryan found the ascent too gradual for his ambition,
and, leaving the road to make its way as it would, he pushed upwards
through the bushes. Every step brought him nearer the gigantic crags
which formed the buttresses of the mountain, and looked wild and
impregnable enough to be the haunt of the grizzly himself.

The young man's thoughts were dwelling fondly upon the grizzly of his
dreams, when he beheld a sight that sent the blood back to his heart
with a rush. Not fifty yards away, in a sunny opening, lay a mass of
brownish fur which could belong to nobody but a bear _in propria
persona_. Great Caesar! Could it be possible? Almost too agitated to
breathe, Sir Bryan moved cautiously toward the creature, covering it
with his rifle. The bear, with the politeness which appeared to cling to
all classes of society in this effetely civiliz