tacked by a grizzly in the mountains."

The gentleman carried his fainting wife into the house, and presently
re-appeared with a brace of revolvers strapped to his waist, and a rifle
in his hand.

"Did you see any of the boys hurt?"

He asked this question in a firm voice; but his pale face and quivering
lips showed that the news he had just received had not been without its
effect upon him.

"No, sir," replied Arthur. "My horse ran away with me; but I heard the
fight, and I know that the dogs were all cut to pieces. The bear was an
awful monster--as large as an ox; and such teeth and claws as he had! I
never saw the like in all my hunting."

In a few moments, half a dozen herdsmen, all well armed, galloped up,
one of them leading his employer's horse.

"Vane," said Mr. Harris, as he sprang into his saddle, "you will stop on
your way home, and tell Mr. Winters, will you not?"

Arthur replied by putting spurs to his horse, and in a few moments he
was standing in Mr. Winters's court, spreading consternation among the
people of the rancho. Dick and Bob were there; but, unlike the rest of
the herdsmen, they seemed to be but little affected by Arthur's story.

"You'll never see those boys again," said the latter, winding up his
narrative with a description of the bear by which they had been
attacked.

"Now, don't you be anyways oneasy," replied Dick, hurrying off to saddle
his horse. "If it war a grizzly, he's dead enough by this time, for I
knowed them youngsters long afore you sot eyes on to 'em, an' I know
what they can do. Didn't I tell you, 'Squire," he added, turning to Mr.
Winters, who was pacing anxiously up and down the porch, "that Frank
would come out all right when he war stampeded with them buffaler? Wal,
I tell you the same now."

Arthur remained at the rancho until Uncle James and his herdsmen set out
for the mountains, and then turned his face homeward.

It is a rule that seldom fails, that when one meets a braggadocio, he
can put him down as a coward. We have seen that it held good in Arthur's
case; for, although he had not caught the smallest glimpse of the animal
in the bushes, he was so terrified that he had run his horse eight
miles; and, while he was plunging his spurs into the gray's sides at
almost every jump, he imagined that the animal was running away with
him. He was so badly frightened that he did not pause to consider that
he might have occasioned a great deal of unnecessary anxiety