As this sense was borne in upon him, Black Bruin lost no time in
scrambling out through the opening.

His first act on coming forth into the open air with the moon and the
stars and the free sky above him, was to stretch. He then looked about
him as though uncertain what was coming next.

As he stood irresolute, looking first at the wreck and then away to the
outline of a great mountain that stretched above him, seeming to reach up
into the very heavens, the long, lithe form of a panther slipped by him
and melted into the darkness. A moment later a jaguar followed it; they
were going back to freedom.

Then Black Bruin stretched his nose high in air and sniffed the fresh
untamed winds. They were sweet with the scent of the southern pine.
Suggestions of the persimmon fruit were also there and the tantalizing
odor of witch-hazel and other sweet scents that the bear knew not. There
was a clump of underbrush just ahead and into it Black Bruin crashed.

Weeds swished as he passed and the brush whipped his face. With bushes
parting and grasses and weeds bending at his coming, the old sense of
freedom came surging back to the escaped prisoner and he stretched out
his strong muscles, which had been so long cramped in the cage, and
shuffled up the side of the mountain at his best pace. Through thickets
and brambles he crashed with a wild exultation; up precipitate crags he
labored with feverish excitement and frenzy that grew with each moment.
He sniffed at the rustling fronds and mosses as he passed, with wild
delight. How fresh, how new, how satisfying the wilderness was!

Now racing through deep gulches, and now scrambling up steep bluffs with
sheer delight of motion, he fled.

At last the moon set and the stars faded and from the heart of the
Cumberland Mountains, near the top of one of its most jagged and
unfrequented spurs, Black Bruin beheld his first sunrise in southern
skies.

Slowly the east warmed and glowed until at last the golden disk mounted
over the top of a twin peak and gilded the mountain upon which Black
Bruin stood with a flood of golden sunlight. Birds began to twitter
strange songs in the tree-tops and thickets and the high peak sang for
joy at the sun's coming.

At this auspicious moment, Black Bruin reared upon his hind legs and
placing his forepaws high upon the trunk of a sentinel pine, raked a deep
scar in the bark. This was his hall-mark;--the sign by which he took
possession of t