Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had crept to the end of the drooping limb with an air of—

“Now catch me if you can!”

“You funny little rascal,” laughed the Boy from the Valley Farm, as he hitched himself astride the other end of the limb.

“I’m going to wait right here till you get tired of it. So you might as well make up your mind to getting caught. You won’t mind in the least, though, once you find out what it’s like to be tame. I’ll bring you all the fish you can eat. Sweet corn, too! And every time you learn to do a trick I’ll give you a lump of maple sugar. How’ll you like that, sir?” And the Boy fished a lump of his favorite sweet from his overalls pocket and held it out to the cub.

But he received no response from the other end of the limb.

Indeed, had the cub really understood what the Boy was saying, the result would have been no different. For freedom means more to a wilderness creature than life itself. Better a dinner of bark and his freedom than a banquet of honey served at the end of a rope, Twinkly Eyes could have told him.

Then an idea came to him. He began shaking the limb to which clung the cub. He shook and shook, till he was tired—but the harder he swung the limb, the tighter clung the little Black Bear to the swaying tip.

The lump of maple sugar dropped from the Boy’s busy fingers. The cub gazed after it with a hungry sniff, then—as easily as a bag of meal—he dropped to the ground, grabbed the sugar, and made off with it between his jaws.

The Boy stared in surprise, then let himself slide down the trunk. But fast as he came, the little bear was faster, and all he found for his afternoon’s adventure were the boy-like tracks of the padded feet, with their doglike claws, as they galloped away down the wet river bank.

“Well, I declare!” said the Boy. “If you haven’t got the best of me again, you clever rascal!”

But he didn’t give up the chase. Not for an instant. The cowbell found him deaf, and for once the supper hour was forgotten. For now he wanted nothing on earth so much as to catch that cub.

Following the broad footprints till they turned off among the thick pine needles, he fell to his knees to study the ground for signs of the little bear’s trail.