He had doubled round the second, and taken
refuge behind the third mass of rock.

Waiting a moment till the baffled bear went to look behind another rock,
he ran straight back again to his tree, hastily gathered up his ropes,
and reascended to his branch, where the bear found him again not many
minutes later.

"Ha! HA! you old rascal!" he shouted, as he fastened the end of a rope
firmly to the branch, and gathered in the slack so as to have the
running noose handy. "I've got you now. Come, come along; have another
taste of my toe!"

This invitation was given when the bear stood in his former position
under the tree and looked up. Once again it accepted the invitation,
and rose to the hunter's toe as a salmon rises to an irresistible fly.

"That's it! Now, hold on--just one moment. _There_!"

As Tim finished the sentence, he dropped the noose so deftly over the
bear's head and paws that it went right down to his waist. This was an
unlooked-for piece of good fortune. The utmost the hunter had hoped for
was to noose the creature round the neck. Moreover, it was done so
quickly that the monster did not seem to fully appreciate what had
occurred, but continued to strain and reach up at the toe in an imbecile
sort of way. Instead, therefore, of drawing the noose tight, Little Tim
dropped a second noose round the monster's neck, and drew that tight.
Becoming suddenly alive to its condition, the grizzly made a backward
plunge, which drew both ropes tight and nearly strangled it, while the
branch on which Tim was perched shook so violently that it was all he
could do to hold on.

For full half an hour that bear struggled fiercely to free itself, and
often did the shaken hunter fear that he had miscalculated the strength
of his ropes, but they stood the test well, and, being elastic, acted in
some degree like lines of indiarubber. At the end of that time the bear
fell prone from exhaustion, which, to do him justice, was more the
result of semi-strangulation than exertion.

This was what Little Tim had been waiting for and expecting. Quietly
but quickly he descended to the ground, but the bear saw him, partially
recovered, no doubt under an impulse of rage, and began to rear and
plunge again, compelling his foe to run to the fallen rocks for shelter.
When Bruin had exhausted himself a second time, Tim ran forward and
seized the old net with which he had failed to catch the previous bear,
and threw it over his