k, uttering excited
yelps. Growler thought he scented a good fight ahead, and he would
rather chew on a good adversary any day than upon a piece of beefsteak.

Seeing what was expected of them, and made courageous by Growler's
example, the pack followed at full cry, and the great bear-hunt was on
in earnest.

Black Bruin heard them almost at the outset, where he was digging roots
in the deep woods, and for some reason the sounds annoyed him. He knew
they were made by dogs, for he had often heard the old hound Hecla at
the farmhouse running rabbits in the near-by swamp.

But here, there were half-a-dozen hounds instead of one, and their
baying was fairly clamorous.

Finally, the pack entered the woods not forty rods away, and Black
Bruin began to get uneasy. At last it dawned upon him, as the pack
drew still nearer and nearer, that; they were upon his track. This
thought filled him with both fear and rage. What did these curs want
of him? Had he not killed a dog that was worrying him, while with
Pedro, with a single blow?

So he crouched in a thicket and waited expectantly. He had not long to
wait, for in fifteen seconds the pack came up. When they discovered
the bear so near at hand, however, and saw what menacing game they had
been running, the hounds all slunk back to a safe distance, and sat on
their tails. But not so Growler.

Here was the scrap of his life with an animal three times as large as
the big Newfoundland, whom he was in the habit of worrying. So he
rushed into the thicket and sprang at Black Bruin's throat.

[Illustration: GROWLER SPRANG AT BLACK BRUIN'S THROAT]

But quick as he was, he was not as quick as his adversary, who ripped
open the side of his head with a lucky blow, and stretched him gasping
upon the ground. Black Bruin then reached down and biting the kicking
dog through the neck, finished his troubles in short order.

Growler uttered one agonized cry, and stretched out dead. This was
enough for the rest of the pack, all of whom stuck their tails between
their legs and ran for their respective masters.

Hearing the cries of men near at hand, Black Bruin slunk out of the
thicket and off into the deep woods, but not soon enough to escape a
fusillade of buckshot which whizzed about him as he ran, a few of them
biting deep into his flesh.

But he was soon lost to sight, and as the pack would not follow, now
that Growler was no more, the hunt was finally abandoned for that