wept down noiselessly from outer space,
till, if there had been any such things as thermometers up there, the
mercury would have been frozen hard as steel and the thin spirit to a
sticky, ropy syrup. But even such cold as that could not get down to the
hidden snow-house where the old bear lay so sound asleep."

The Child wagged his head wistfully at the picture, and then cheered
himself with the resolve to build just such a snowhouse in the back yard
that winter--if only there should fall enough snow. But he managed to
hold his tongue about it.

"Just about the middle of the winter," went on Uncle Andy, after a pause
to see if the Child was going to interrupt him again, "the old bear began
to stir a little. She grumbled, and whimpered, and seemed to be having
uneasy dreams for a day or two. At last she half woke up--or perhaps a
little more than half. Then a little furry cub was born to her. She was
just about wide enough awake to tell him how glad she was to see him and
have him with her, and to lick him tenderly for a while, and to get him
nursing comfortably. When she had quite satisfied herself that he was a
cub to do her credit, she dozed off to sleep again without any anxiety
whatever. You see, there was not the least chance of his being stolen,
or falling downstairs, or getting into any mischief whatever. And that
was where she had a great advantage over lots of mothers whom we could,
think of if we tried."

"But what made the steam, Uncle Andy?" broke in the Child, somewhat
irrelevantly. He had a way, sometimes rather exasperating to the
narrator, of never forgetting the loose ends in a narrative, and of
calling attention to them at unexpected moments.

"Can't you see that for yourself?" grunted Uncle Andy impatiently. "It
was breath. Try to think for yourself a little. Well, as I was trying
to say, there was nothing much for the cub to do in the snowhouse but
nurse, sleep, and grow. To these three important but not exciting
affairs he devoted himself entirely. Neither to him nor to his big white
mother did it matter in the least whether the long Arctic gales roared
over their unseen roof, or the unimaginable Arctic cold groped for them
with noiseless fingers. Neither foe could reach them in their warm
refuge. Nothing at all, indeed, could find them, except, once in a
while, when the Northern Lights were dancing with unusual brilliance
across the sky, a dim, pallid glow, which would filter do