an amount equal to $500 was deposited in the county bank to the
credit of the Gausdale Bruin. Sir Barry Worthington, Bart., who came
abroad the following summer for the shooting, heard the story, and
thought it a good one. So, after having vainly tried to earn the prize
himself, he added another $500 to the deposit, with the stipulation that
he was to have the skin.

But his rival for parliamentary honors, Robert Stapleton, Esq., the
great iron-master, who had come to Norway chiefly to outshine Sir Barry,
determined that he was to have the skin of that famous bear, if any one
was to have it, and that, at all events, Sir Barry should not have
it. So Mr. Stapleton added $750 to the bear's bank account, with the
stipulation that the skin should come to him.

Mr. Bruin, in the meanwhile, as if to resent this unseemly contention
about his pelt, made worse havoc among the herds than ever, and
compelled several peasants to move their dairies to other parts of the
mountains, where the pastures were poorer, but where they would be free
from his depredations. If the $1,750 in the bank had been meant as
a bribe or a stipend for good behavior, such as was formerly paid to
Italian brigands, it certainly could not have been more demoralizing
in its effect; for all agreed that, since Lars Moe's death, Bruin
misbehaved worse than ever.

II.

There was an odd clause in Lars Moe's will besides the codicil relating
to the bear. It read:

"I hereby give and bequeath to my daughter Unna, or, in case of her
decease, to her oldest living issue, my bay mare Stella, as a token that
I have forgiven her the sorrow she caused me by her marriage."

It seemed incredible that Lars Moe should wish to play a practical joke
(and a bad one at that) on his only child, his daughter Unna, because
she had displeased him by her marriage. Yet that was the common opinion
in the valley when this singular clause became known. Unna had married
Thorkel Tomlevold, a poor tenant's son, and had refused her cousin, the
great lumber-dealer, Morten Janson, whom her father had selected for a
son-in-law.

She dwelt now in a tenant's cottage, northward in the parish; and her
husband, who was a sturdy and fine-looking fellow, eked out a living
by hunting and fishing. But they surely had no accommodations for a
broken-down, wounded, trotting mare, which could not even draw a plough.
It is true Unna, in the days of her girlhood, had been very fond of the
mare,