he saw that to dodge the question longer were but to hide his
head, so to speak, under a fence rail, like a goose, or a pig, and fool
himself into thinking he was safe. So, with a great gulp, to keep his
heart down, which would come heaving up to his throat, he at last cried
out:

"Oh, I told her a lie! I told her a lie!" and bursting into tears, he
hid his face in his coonskin cap for shame.

The bear paused for a moment; then, in a voice quite soft and gentle for
him, said:

"But you mourn in your heart for having done this thing?"

"Yes, indeed; that I do!" and the little prodigal shook from top to toe
with the violence of his sobs.

"And for why?" asked the bear, in the same gentle way, only more so,
almost fatherly.

"Because," sobbed the boy, "had I not done so, I should not be here now,
in this dark and lonesome place, with nobody for company, nobody to give
me my supper, nobody to put me to bed, nobody to--to--"

"And nobody to sing you to sleep with a hymn, hey!" put in the bear with
a mocking grin, his fatherly manner gone In a twinkling. "No, no, my
laddie! You are showing me the matter wrong side out, giving it to me
wrong end foremost. You must mourn in your heart for the little lie you
have told, before you put up such a pitiful mouth for the ills you have
thereby brought upon yourself. Viewed in the right light, these ills are
precisely what you deserve; precisely what you need for your own good.
But come, quiet down and cheer up, and take a fresh start; go on and
make a clean breast of it by telling us the whole story. You climbed the
fence----"

Thus put to it, Sprigg fell to and told the whole thing, from beginning
to end--all just as it had happened. Indeed, he made so clean a breast
of it as to confess that he had cursed the moccasins on flinging them
away in his pet of wrath. When he had ended, greatly surprised was that
little sinner to find how much better he felt that, for once in his
life, he had told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The grim
confessor had kept his eyes the while fixed full and hard on those of
the young delinquent, without saying a word. Now he turned his head to
the right, with a look as were he inquiring of him who stood in the
moccasins if what they had heard were true. This look must have been
answered by an affirmative nod from the head in the air, which Sprigg
could not see; for, with a soft "Ooh-hooh," long drawn out, the bear
bent his eyes to the g