ling in the corn-field, and the crows gathering
in the clan for their annual caucus. The squirrels chattered in the
trees above them, but their old friends, the song-birds, had nearly all
flown away to the South to escape the oncoming winter.

When Jack Frost and the merry north winds had robbed the trees of the
last of their foliage and they stood out grim and gaunt against the
bleak November sky; when the last purple asters and the hardiest bright
goldenrod had faded, Black Bruin felt the old winter drowsiness slowly
stealing upon him.

At last the first snow-storm came and that settled it in both the minds
of Pedro and the bear. So the Italian led his companion far up into a
wilderness region, and after searching about for half a day among the
ledges found a natural cave which was about the size of a small room,
and here left Black Bruin to sleep away the winter months.

He stayed in the region just long enough to make sure that the winter
drowsiness had clutched him and also took the precaution to roll
against the entrance of the cave, a large stone, which he had to move
with a lever, that he might be sure of finding his partner in
Vagabondia when he returned for him in the early spring. Pedro would
take the precaution to come back a few days before the bear would
naturally awaken.

A day or two after Black Bruin was left alone in his cavern a heavy
storm set in, and before it ceased, a foot of snow had fallen.

It was now so deep that the passer-by would never have guessed that a
bear was soundly sleeping a few feet back of the boulder which Pedro
had placed at the entrance of the cave. This now merely looked like a
white snowdrift that some freak of the wind had piled upon the
mountainside.

In the dark and the silence of his underground room Black Bruin slept
through the winter blizzards and cold as well as he would have done in
warmer and more comfortable quarters. No sound broke the silence of
his cave save his own deep breathing. If the sun shone, or the winds
howled, or the storms beat, he knew it not.

Perhaps in dreamland he still wandered up and down the country picking
blueberries or poking under the dead leaves for nuts, and always and
forever doing tricks until his legs and back ached.

As for Pedro, he had no idea of hibernating, so he went away to a
distant city and worked for a fellow countryman in a fruit store.

But work was not to his liking and he longed for spring to come that he