snoring so
loud as to be beyond anything human, they now placed his teepee.

There was not a glimmer of moonlight or starlight to guide him as he
went stumbling and crashing through the brush to his rag residence. His
thoughts were not so much of four-footed visitors as of footpads and the
ease with which they could attack him and get away with his
grandfather's watch which he was wearing.

Out in the open, Mr. Appel was enjoying the novelty tremendously, though
he was a little too warm for comfort in his fleece-lined bag. But after
the last candle had been extinguished he called to his wife cheerily:

"Are you all right, dearie?"

Mrs. Appel was not to be so easily propitiated and did not answer, so he
called again:

"This is great--simply great! I wish you were with me."

Only Mr. Appel and his Maker knew that he screwed up his cheek and
winked at the fabrication.

Sleep came quickly to the tired tourists, and soon there was no sound
save the distant tinkle of the bell on one of the horses and the faint
rumble of Mr. Penrose's slumbers.

It was eleven o'clock or thereabouts, and the clouds had rifted letting
through the starlight, when dark forms began to lumber from the
surrounding woods and pad around the camp, sniffing at various objects
and breathing heavily.

There were bears of all sizes and ages, ranging from yearlings to
grandfathers whose birthdays were lost in antiquity. Mr. Appel, who was
a light sleeper and the first to discover them, would have sworn on a
monument of Bibles that there were at least fifty of them--the size of
mastodons.

Palpitating in his sleeping bag in the midst of them, he may be excused
for exaggeration, although, exactly, there were only eight of them.

The cold sweat broke out on Mr. Appel and he thought that surely the
thumping of his heart must attract their attention. In such mortal
terror as he never had experienced or imagined he quaked while he
speculated as to whether the bear that first discovered him would
disembowel him with one stroke of his mighty paw, and leave him, or
would scrunch his head between his paws and sit down and eat on him?

But once the bears had located the supply-wagon, they went about their
business like trained burglars. Standing on their hind legs, they
crowded about it, tearing open sacks, scattering food, tossing things
hither and thither, jostling each other and grunting when they found
something to their liking.

Their grunting a