let us hope," he sighed, "no one will try to stop you!"

"What worries me is this," explained Herrick. "I can't help
thinking that, if one night of this artificial life is so hard
upon
me, what must it be to those bears!"

Kelly exclaimed, with exasperation: "Confound the bears!" he
cried.
"If you must spoil my supper weeping over animals, weep over
cart-horses. They work. Those bears are loafers. They're as well
fed as pet canaries. They're aristocrats."

"But it's not a free life!" protested Herrick. "It's not the life
they love."

"It's a darned sight better," declared Kelly, than sleeping in a
damp wood, eating raw blackberries----"

"The more you say," retorted Herrick, "the more you show you know
nothing whatsoever of nature's children and their habits."

"And all you know of them," returned Kelly, is that a cat has
nine
lives, and a barking dog won't bite. You're a nature faker."
Herrick refused to be diverted.

"It hurt me," he said. "They were so big, and good-natured, and
helpless. I'll bet that woman beats them! I kept thinking of them
as they were in the woods, tramping over the clean pine needles,