. The gleam of a maple's leaves near by, already
turning scarlet, had caught her eye; she had expressed a wish for some
of the gaudy beauties, and he had climbed the tree and was plucking the
leaves for her, when, suddenly, the woods resounded with the fierce
barking of the dog in the direction from which they had just come. He
called to her to be ready to shoot, that a deer might have been
started, when there was a crashing through the bushes and the quarry
burst into sight.

Lumbering into the open, turning only to growl at the dog which was
yelping wildly in its rear, but keeping wisely out of its reach, was a
black bear. The beast did not see the woman opposite him, but rushed
at the log and was half way across it when she screamed. Then it
paused. Behind was the dog, before the woman; it advanced slowly,
growling.

Harlson, in the tree, saw it all, and, as a fireman drops with a rush
down the pole in the engine-house, he came down the maple's boll and
bounded toward the log. The bear hesitated.

"Shoot! you little fool, shoot!" shouted the man, as he ran.

Her courage returned in a moment, at least did partial presence of
mind. She raised the gun desperately, and the report rang out. The
bear clutched wildly at the log, then rolled off, and fell to the rocky
bottom, twenty feet below. Harlson seized his own gun and looked down.
The beast was motionless, and from a little hole in its head the blood
was trickling.

And the woman--well, the woman was sitting on the grass, very pale of
face and silent.

The man seized her, and half smothered her with kisses, and shouted
aloud to the forest and all its creatures that great was Diana of the
Ephesians!

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HOUSE WONDERFUL.

And the bear's skin was tanned with the glossy black fur still upon it,
the head with the white-fanged jaws still attached and made natural
with all the skill of an artist in such things, and it lay, a great,
soft, black rug, upon a couch in the House Wonderful, or, at least, the
house to which Harlson gave that name. It seemed to him the House
Wonderful, indeed.

Therein was held all there was in the world for him, and he was
satisfied with it all, and content, save that he felt, at seasons, how
little man is worthy of the happiness which may come to him sometimes,
even in this world. Yet it was not all poetry in the House Wonderful;
there were many practical happenings, and many droll ones.

The House