and, for the next few minutes busied
herself in cleaning up and stowing away the dinner things.
This done, she resolved to go outside, for a wonderful
change had come about in the weather. It was only too
obvious that a new Spring had been born, and already its
mild, quickening breath was weakening the grip of King
Frost.

Dorothy walked over towards the pines. She could detect
a resinous, aromatic odour in the air. Here and there
a pile of snow on the flat boughs would lose its grip on
the roughened surface and slip to earth with a hollow
thud. She skirted the outhouses, and then made for the
long, low-roofed hut again. She was passing a large pile
of cord-wood which she noted was built in the form of a
square, when, happening to look into it, she saw something
that for the moment caused her heart to stop beating and
paralysed her with fear. It was a great gaunt cinnamon
bear, which, seated on its haunches, was watching her
with a look of comical surprise upon its preternaturally
shrewd, human-like face.

Dorothy's heart was thumping like a steam-engine. Fear,
indeed, seemed to give her wings, for she gathered up
her skirts and ran towards the house as she had never
run in her life.

But the bear had just an hour or so before risen from
his long winter's sleep, influenced, doubtless, by those
"blind motions of the earth that showed the year had
turned"; feeling uncommonly empty, and therefore uncommonly
hungry, he had left his cave in the hillside lower down
the valley to saunter upwards in search of a meal. The
horses had unfortunately scented him before he was aware
of their proximity, and, with that lively terror which
all animals evince in the neighbourhood of bears, had
broken madly away, to Bruin's great chagrin. If he had
not been half asleep, and therefore stupid, he would have
crawled upon them from the lee side, and been on the
back, or at the throat, of one before they could have
divined his presence. The noise of the men's voices had
startled him, and he had gone into the wood heap to
collect his thoughts and map out a new plan of campaign.
The voices had ceased, but there was a nice, fresh-looking
girl, who had walked right into his very arms, as it
were. It was not likely he was going to turn up his nose
at her. On the contrary, he would embrace the
opportunity--and the young lady.

He must, indeed, have still been half asleep, for he had
given Dorothy time to make a start, and there was no