and watch them. Go to the house," he commanded. "I'll be with you
in an hour, and report."

It was with real relief that, on assembling for dinner, the house
party found Herrick, in high spirits, with the usual number of
limbs, and awaiting them. The experiment had proved a great
success. He told how, unheeded by the bears, he had, without
difficulty, followed in their tracks. For an hour he had watched
them. No happy school-children, let loose at recess, could have
embraced their freedom with more obvious delight. They drank from
the running streams, for honey they explored the hollow
tree-trunks, they sharpened their claws on moss-grown rocks, and
among the fallen oak leaves scratched violently for acorns. So
satisfied was Herrick with what he had seen, with the success of
his experiment, and so genuine and unselfish was he in the
thought
of the happiness he had brought to the beasts of the forests,
that
for him no dinner ever passed more pleasantly. Miss Waring, who
sat
next to her host, thought she had seldom met a man with so kind
and
simple a nature. She rather resented the fact, and she was
inwardly
indignant that so much right feeling and affection could be
wasted
on farmyard 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