rom somewhere near by. He sat
up instantly, his senses on the alert, listening to locate the
disturbance, and get some sort of line on its nature.

CHAPTER IX.

LUCKY BRUIN.

"Oh! murder! he's broke loose, and remembers about me!" Bumpus was
shouting close to the ear of Thad; and there was a great scurrying in
that quarter, as if the fat boy might be trying to hide himself under
the blankets.

Thad hurried outside as fast as he could; and in this he was closely
imitated by Bob White and Giraffe, who happened to be his other tent
mates.

Already Thad had made a most important as well as surprising discovery.
Those yells did not appear to be given by Allan, Step-hen, Davy Jones or
Smithy. They were fashioned on another key from the well-known voices of
these fellow scouts.

Of course, the first and most natural idea that flashed into Thad's mind
lay in the direction of the two foreigners, whom Smithy seemed to
believe must be Bohemians. Could they have followed the trail of the
escaped bear, and entering the camp of the scouts by stealth, were now
engaged in administering the beating to the poor animal, as they thought
he deserved for leaving them in the lurch?

In one way it sounded like that might be the case, for amidst all the
clamor of shouts Thad could detect something like roars or grunts from
the bear.

But no sooner was he outside the tent than he realized that this could
not be the case at all. The voices were certainly not those of men, but
rather sounded like cries falling from boys' tongues. And instead of
being raised in anger, they were frantic with _fright_!

An old moon had risen while the campers slept, so that it was no longer
dark out on the lake near by.

The first thing Thad did was to look toward the tree where the bear had
been chained at the time Smithy took care of him so neatly. He was
standing on his hind legs, and giving tongue to his feelings in deep
rumbling roars that seemed to almost make the very air tremble.

"Just listen to 'em go, would you?" ejaculated a voice close to Thad's
shoulder, and he turned to find Allan there; while his three tent mates
were close behind, all worked up again over this new and exciting
mystery of the first night in camp.

"Who in the wide world can it be?" asked Bob White.

"Don't know; but I'm sorry for one of them," remarked Thad; "because he
smashed into the trunk of that tree just then; and I rather guess he'll
have the marks to