ds smiling at the tiny toes and pink skin underneath. Suddenly,
however, the cub stretched and from the velvet paw there shot out five
sharp nails, long enough to make the children gasp.

"Where does he hide them?" said Lavinia.

"Gee! I never thought bear babies had claws like that!" said Don,
showing more respect for the cubs thereafter.

"Oh, Mike, what are you going to do?" asked everyone who had seen the
bottle.

"Feed babbies," grinned Mike, as he opened a cub's mouth and stuck the
bottle inside at an angle that would let the liquid run out--and in.

Immediately, the cub gulped and started sucking at the impromptu feeding
bottle.

Mike watched the milk diminish and when the bottle was half empty he
took it away and opened the other little cub's mouth for its food. The
first one, being comfortably fed, rolled over and went on sleeping.

The second cub was the smaller of the two and could not drink the milk
as rapidly as the sturdier one. Several times it choked and had to cough
and sneeze, which made the children laugh delightedly, but Mike waited
patiently until it had recovered breath.

"Mike, won't they wake up and play?" asked Dot.

"Him wake up, tree-four-five day!" replied Mike.

"Not before?" asked Don.

"Not before him eye open--'bout five day!" returned Mike.

Mike made a bed of balsam tips covered with an old buck-skin shirt.

The cubs were deposited upon the new bed and curled up close together,
never missing their old home or realizing that they had a foster-mother.
Mike fed them regularly, and the children found them a never-ending
source of delight.

CHAPTER IX

FATHER BEAR VISITS THE CAMP

THE following morning after his return from the cave, Mike started off
to inspect his traps. He rather suspected that the old father bear had
deserted the mother and cubs and wandered over the mountain in another
direction and possibly been trapped by some hunter. If such was not the
case, he might have come upon his mate's tracks and followed her to the
trap. In that case he might have been trapped as his mate was. There was
still another thought which came to Mike, but he disliked dwelling on
it: the bear might scent the man who stole the babies and follow him.
Mike knew of cases where a mother bear had followed her cubs for miles
and miles and then fought with the thief.

Therefore, Mike was very observing as he crept through the woods and
started through the glade where the trap was