ghing gasp,
cut off abruptly; and the flattened form lay still, the wide-open
mouth and protruding tongue jammed down among the mosses. At the crash
the cub had jumped back in terror. Then he sat up on his haunches and
looked on with anxious bewilderment.

* * * * *

When, early the following morning, the Indian who had set the deadfall
came, he found the cub near perishing with cold and fear and hunger.
He knew that the little animal would be worth several bearskins, so he
warmed it, wrapped it in his jacket, and took it home to his cabin.
Fed and sheltered, it turned to its captor as a rescuer, and acquired
a perilous faith in the friendliness of man. In fact, it speedily
learned to follow the Indian about the cabin, and to fret for him in
his absence.

That same autumn the Indian took the cub into Edmundston and sold him
for a price that well repaid his pains; and thence, within three or
four months, and by as many transfers, the little animal found his way
into the possession of a travelling circus. Being good-natured and
teachable, and inclined, through his first misunderstanding of the
situation which had robbed him of his mother, to regard mankind as
universally beneficent, he was selected to become a trick bear. In the
course of his training for this honour, he learned that his trainer,
at least, was not wholly beneficent, and toward him he developed a
cordial bitterness, which grew with his years. But he learned his
lessons, nevertheless, and became a star of the ring; and for the
manager of the show, who always kept peanuts or gingerbread in pocket
for him, he conceived such a warmth of regard as he had hitherto
strictly reserved for the Indian.

Valued and well cared for, he grew to a magnificent stature, and up to
the middle of his fifth year he never knew what his life was missing.
To be sure, it was exasperatingly monotonous, this being rolled about
the world in stuffy, swaying cage-cars, and dancing in the ring, and
playing foolish tricks with a red-and-white clown, and being stared at
by hot, applauding, fluttering tiers of people, who looked exactly the
same at every place he came to. His memory of that first walk down the
mountain, at his great mother's heels, had been laid to sleep at the
back of his curiously occupied brain. He had no understanding of the
fierce restlessness, the vague longing, which from time to time, and
especially when the autumn frosts began to