the brush, hurriedly wiping his eyes. "Here,
father," he said.

"And what are you doing here at this hour of the night, pray?" said the
minister, angrily, turning toward him.

"I couldn't get home very well," replied Hughie.

"And why not, pray? Don't begin any excuses with me, sir." Nothing
annoyed the minister as an attempt to excuse ill-doing.

"I guess he would have been glad enough to have got home half an hour
ago, sir," broke in Don, laughing. "Look there." He pointed to the bear
lying dead, with Nigger standing over him.

"The Lord save us!" said Long John Cameron, himself the greatest among
the hunters of the county. "What do you say? And how did you get him?
Jee-ru-piter! he's a grand one."

The old man, the minister, and Don walked about the bear in admiring
procession.

"Yon's a terrible gash," said Long John, pointing to a gaping wound in
the breast. "Was that your Snider, Don?"

"Not a bit of it, father. The bear's Hughie's. He killed him himself."

"Losh me! And you don't tell me! And how did you manage that, Hughie?"

"He chased me up that tree, and I guess would have got me only for
Fido."

The minister gasped.

"Got you? Was he as near as that?"

"He wasn't three feet away," said Hughie, and with that he proceeded to
give, in his most graphic style, a description of his great fight with
the bear.

"When I heard the first shot," said Don, "I was away across the swamp.
I tell you I tore back here, and when I came, what did I see but Hughie
and Mr. Bear both sitting down and looking coolly at each other a few
yards apart. And then Nigger downed him and I put a bullet into his
heart." Don was greatly delighted, and extremely proud of Hughie's
achievement.

"And how did you know about it?" asked Don of his father.

"It was the minister here came after me."

"Yes," said the minister, "it was Fusie told me you had gone off on a
bear hunt, and so I went along to the Cameron's with Mr. Craven here, to
see if you had got home."

Meantime, Mr. Craven had been looking Hughie over.

"Mighty plucky thing," he said. "Great nerve," and he lapsed into
silence, while Fusie could not contain himself, but danced from one foot
to the other with excited exclamations.

The minister had come out intending, as he said, "to teach that boy a
lesson that he would remember," but as he listened to Hughie's story,
his anger gave place to a great thankfulness.

"It was a great mercy, my boy," he said at l