a strange state of agitation.

"It must be a bear," replied Phil, dropping his axe and springing to the
sledge for his rifle. "His winter den is there, and we have disturbed
him. Get out your gun--quick! We can't afford to lose him. Meat's too
scarce in camp just now." Even as he spoke, and before the guns could be
taken from their moose-skin cases, the motion of the branches increased,
then came a violent upheaval of the snow that weighted them down, and
the boys caught a glimpse of some huge shaggy animal issuing from the
powdered whiteness.

"Hurry!" cried Phil. "No, look out! We're too late! What? Great Scott!
It can't be. Yes, it is! Hurrah! Glory, hallelujah! I knew he'd pull
through all right, and I believe I'm the very happiest fellow in all the
world at this minute."

"Mebbe you be, son," remarked Jalap Coombs, "and then again mebbe
there's others as is equally joyful. As my old friend Kite Roberson
useter say, 'A receiver's as good as a thief,' and I sartainly received
a heap of pleasure through hearing you holler jest now."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

STORIES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

BY HENRIETTA CHRISTIAN WRIGHT.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

[Illustration: HE DISTINGUISHED THE CALL OF ANIMALS.]

Late in the eighteenth century the village of Cooperstown lay almost in
the midst of the primeval forest, which extended for miles around. Here
the future novelist James Fenimore Cooper had been brought while yet an
infant by his father, who had built the family mansion, Otsego Hall, in
this secluded spot, far from the highways of travel, designing to make
it the centre of a settlement of some note, if possible. Here, as the
boy grew older, he learned wood-lore as the young Indians learned it,
face to face with the divinity of the forest. He knew the language of
the wild animals, and could distinguish their calls far across the
gloomy spaces of the wood; he could follow the deer and bear to their
retreats in dim secluded recesses; he could trace the path of the
retreating wolf by the broken cobwebs glistening in the early sunlight;
and the cry of the panther to its mate high overhead in the interlacing
boughs of the pines and hemlocks was of a speech as familiar as his own
tongue. When he was thirsty he made a hunter's cup of glossy leaves and
drank in true Indian fashion; when fatigued, he could lie down and rest
with that feeling of security that only comes to the forest-bred; when
thoughtful, he could lear