e not
slow in telling him that he had behaved from start to finish like no
"greenhorn," but a regular "old sport."

"My cracky! 'twas lucky for me that you had game blood in you, which
showed up," exclaimed Joe, catching the boy's arm in a friendly grip,
with an odd respect in his touch, which marked the admission of young
Farrar into the brotherhood of hunters. "I hadn't a charge left, an' not
even my hunting-knife. Lots o' city swells 'u'd have been plumb scared
before a growler like that,"--touching Bruin's carcass with his
foot,--"even if they had a small arsenal to back 'em up. They'd have
dropped rifle and cartridges, and hugged the nearest trunk. I've seen
fellers do it scores o' times, bless ye! after they came out here rigged
up in sporting-book style, talking fire about hunting bears and moose.
But that was all the fire there was to 'em."

Yet Neal's triumph over the poor brute, which had raced well for its
life, was not without a faint twinge of pain; and he was too manly to
look on this as a weakness. A sportsman he might be, of the sort who can
shoot straight when necessity demands it, but never of that class who
prowl through the forests with fingers tingling to pull the trigger,
dreading to lose a chance of "letting blood" from any slim-legged moose
or velvet-nosed buck which may run their way. It needed Doc's praise to
make him feel fully satisfied with his deed.

"It was a crack shot, boy," said the doctor proudly. "And I guess the
farmer at the next settlement will feel like giving you a medal for it.
Old Bruin has only got what he gave to every creature he could master."

There being no tree conveniently near to which they could string up the
dead bear, the guides decided to leave the ugly matter of skinning and
dissecting him for morning light. The excited party returned to camp,
but not to sleep. They built up their scattered fire, squatted round it,
and discoursed of the night's adventure until a clear dawn-gleam
brightened the eastern sky. Then Uncle Eb and Joe started out again
across the _brulee_. They reappeared before breakfast-time, bringing
Bruin's skin and a goodly portion of his meat.

Joe laid the hide at Neal's feet.

"There, boy," he said, "the skin is yours. It belongs rightly to the man
who killed the bear; and I guess the brute wasn't mortally hurt at all
till your bullet nipped him in the neck."

"But what about the fifteen dollars from that New York man, Joe? You'll
lose it