y host and his son Walter, I said that
it was time for me to go and get the bear.

"But you won't go by the main road," said Mr. Larramie. "That makes a
great curve below here to avoid a hill. If I understood you properly,
you left the bear not far from a small house inhabited by three
women?"

"They're the McKenna sisters," added Walter.

"Yes," said the father, "and their house is not more than two miles
from here by a field road. I will go with you."

I exclaimed that I would not put him to so much trouble, but my words
were useless. The Walter son declared that he would go also, that he
would like the walk; the Percy son declared he was going if anybody
went; and Genevieve, the girl with the yellow plait, said that she
wished she were a boy so that she could go too, and she wished she
could go anyway, boy or no boy, and as her father said that there was
no earthly reason why she should not go, she ran for her hat.

Miss Edith looked as if she would like to go, but she did not say so;
and, as for me, I agreed to every proposition. It would certainly be
great fun to do things with this lively household.

We started off without the boy, but it was not long before he came
running after us, and to my horror I perceived that he carried a
rifle.

"What are you going to do with that, Percy?" exclaimed his father.

"I don't expect to do anything with it," the boy replied, "but I
thought it would be a good thing to bring it along--especially as
Genevieve is with us. Nobody knows what might happen."

"That's true," exclaimed Walter, "and the fact that Genevieve is along
is the best reason in the world for your not bringing a gun. You
better go take it back."

To this Percy strongly objected. He was going out on a sort of a
bear-hunt, and to him half the pleasure would be lost if he did not
carry a gun. I am not a coward, but a boy with a gun is a terror to
me. My expression may have intimated my state of mind, for Mr.
Larramie said to me that we had now gone so far that it would be a
pity to send Percy back, and that he did not think there would be any
danger, for his boy had been taught how to carry a gun properly.

"We are all out-of-door people and sportsmen," he said, "and we begin
early. But I suppose what you are thinking about is the danger of some
of us ending soon. But we need not be afraid of that. Walk in front,
Percy, and keep the barrel pointed downward."

When we came in sight of the house of the t