t, as he managed to find
food to supply his needs, he accepted the situation philosophically and
was far from being unhappy.

One day his wanderings brought him to the edge of the wilderness where,
inclosed by a zigzag fence of rails, he caught his first glimpse of
human habitation. Concealed in a clump of young poplars, he gazed
curiously at the Hermit who was chopping wood at the rear of his cabin,
and at Pal who ran about, sniffing eagerly here and there, but never far
from his adored master.

At length one of his excursions into the border of the forest brought to
Pal's keen nostrils the scent of the bear. Pal hated bears. The hair
stiffened along his back while a growl grew in his throat, rumbled
threateningly and broke forth into a volley of shrill barks.

"Bear! Bear! Bear!" he called in plain dog language; but the ears of the
Hermit seemed to be strangely dull and, thinking that the dog had taken
up the trail of a rabbit or at the most that of a fox, he whistled Pal
back to the clearing. Pal obeyed reluctantly, stopping every few steps
to look back and voice his opinion of the intruder; but, by the time he
had joined his master, the bear had slipped into the forest.

Late that same afternoon, as Mokwa stood at the top of a small hill, a
bright glitter from a grove of straight, smooth trees below, caught his
eye. The glitter was alluring and, with no thought save to gratify his
curiosity, the bear shambled quickly down the slope and brought up
before a tree on the trunk of which hung a small, shining bucket. The
sunlight reflected from the tin dazzled his little eyes, while to his
ears came a curious, musical "plop, plop."

Without even taking the precaution to glance around him, Mokwa reared
upon his haunches and examined the pail into which a clear fluid
splashed, drop by drop, from a little trough inserted in the tree. A
faint but delectable odour drifted to the sniffing black nose of the
bear. It was Mokwa's first experience with maple sap and he proceeded to
make the most of it.

Though unable to reach the liquid, owing to the smallness of the pail,
he could easily lick the spile which conveyed the sap from the tree, and
this Mokwa did with evident relish. His tongue sought out every crevice
and even greedily lapped the tree about the gash; then, growing
impatient at the slowness with which the wonderful fluid appeared, he
turned his attention to the pail. Mokwa wished, no doubt, that several
inches m