was showing in a fair-sized
city in Northern New York, in St. Lawrence River County. The day was
exceptionally warm, the crowd was unusually large and the torment of
captivity was unusually galling to the wild beasts.

Black Bruin was restless and paced to and fro in his cage, and sniffed
its bars more often than usual.

Suddenly from out the babel about him a voice spoke that fell pleasantly
on his ear and in the sound was something that he remembered. When the
voice ceased speaking, some psychological reaction slipped a slide in the
brute mind, the impression of which had been gained many years before,
and the great bear saw, as plainly as he had seen it then, the farmhouse
with the chicken-coops in the front yard, and ducks, geese, turkeys and
hens all moving about over the green turf. There was the barn and the
outbuildings and the long low hen-house where he had so often robbed the
hens' nests. Then the scene shifted slightly and the dreamer saw the
orchard at the back of the farmhouse with its gnarled and twisted trees
and the row of little white houses in the shade near by. "Hum, hum,
zip--hum," went the bees flying in from their long quest afield in search
of the heart secret of the floral world. But whether it was the droning
of bees or the hum of many voices that he heard Black Bruin could not
tell.

At this point in his reverie he looked through his bars at three of the
circus-goers who were evincing peculiar interest in him. These were a
man, a woman, and a boy of about nine years.

"What a fine bear," the man was saying; "much larger than the old female
that I shot on that----" But the man did not finish the sentence, for
noticing the pallor that crept into his wife's face at his words and the
shiver that ran through her frame, he desisted.

"Look here, sonny," he continued to the boy, "if we had been able to have
kept Black Bruin until now he would probably have looked just about like
this old chap. What do you think of that?"

"Whew," whistled the boy. "Ain't he a monster? Our bear wasn't more
than a quarter as big."

"No," replied the man. "That was because he was not grown, but he was a
fine cub when we let the peddler have him. I have often wondered what
became of him."

"Wasn't Bar-bar cunning," exclaimed the boy, "when he was a little fuzzy
fellow and I used to roll about with him on the floor and pull his ears,
just like the photograph you had taken of us."

"Come, John, let