d fowls, and
four-footed animals. She felt sure that some nice girl, seated at the
other end of the table, smiling through the light of the wax candles
upon Herrick, would soon make him forget his love of "Nature and
Nature's children." She even saw herself there, and this may have made
her exhibit more interest in Herrick's experiment than she really felt.
In any event, Herrick found her most sympathetic' and when dinner was
over carried her off to a corner of the terrace. It was a warm night in
early October, and the great woods of the game preserve that stretched
below them were lit with a full moon.

On his way to the lake for a moonlight row with one of the house party
who belonged to that sex that does not row, but looks well in the
moon-light, Kelly halted, and jeered mockingly.

"How can you sit there," he demanded, "while those poor beasts are
freezing in a cave, with not even a silk coverlet or a pillow-sham. You
and your valet ought to be down there now carrying them pajamas."

"Kelly," declared Herrick, unruffled in his moment of triumph, "I hate
to say, 'I told you so,' but you force me. Go away," he commanded. "You
have neither imagination nor soul."

"And that's true," he assured Miss Waring, as Kelly and his companion
left them. "Now, I see nothing in what I accomplished that is
ridiculous. Had you watched those bears as I did, you would have felt
that sympathy that exists between all who love the out-of-door life. A
dog loves to see his master pick up his stick and his hat to take him
for a walk, and the man enjoys seeing the dog leaping and quartering
the fields before him. They are both the happier. At least I am happier
to-night, knowing those bears are at peace and at home, than I would
be if I thought of them being whipped through their tricks in a dirty
theatre." Herrick pointed to the great forest trees of the preserve,
their tops showing dimly in the mist of moonlight. "Somewhere, down in
that valley," he murmured, "are three happy animals. They are no longer
slaves and puppets--they are their own masters. For the rest of their
lives they can sleep on pine needles and dine on nuts and honey. No one
shall molest them, no one shall force them through degrading tricks.
Hereafter they can choose their life, and their own home among the
rocks, and the----" Herrick's words were frozen on his tongue. From the
other end of the terrace came a scream so fierce, so long, so full of
human suffering, tha