try to return to his cage. And this is known to be true of human beings just as of the wild creatures. There are certain breeds of men, used to the far-lying hills, who, if inclosed in cities, run up and down them until they die. The Indians, for instance, haven't ever been able to adjust themselves to civilization. There are several thousand of them now where once were millions.

Bushy-tail was not particularly afraid of the human beings that passed up and down the park, because he had learned by experience that they usually attempted no harm to him. But, nevertheless, he had his instincts. He didn't entirely trust them. Occasionally a child would come with a bag of nuts, and he would sit on the grass not a dozen feet away to gather such as were thrown to him. But all the time he kept one sharp eye open for any sudden or dangerous motions. And every instinct warned him against coming nearer than a dozen feet. After several generations, probably the squirrels of this park would climb all over its visitors and sniff in their ears and investigate the back of their necks. But this wasn't the way of Bushy-tail. He had come too recently from the wild places. And he wondered, most intensely, whether this tall, forked creature had a pocket full of nuts. He swung down on the grass to see.

"Why, you little devil!" Dan said in a whisper. His eyes suddenly sparkled with delight. And he forgot all about the doctor's words and his own prospects in his bitter regrets that he had not brought a pocketful of nuts. Unfortunately, he had never acquired the peanut habit. His mother had always thought it vulgar.

And then Dan did a curious thing. Even later, he didn't know why he did it, or what gave him the idea that he could decoy the squirrel up to him by doing it. That was his only purpose,—just to see how close the squirrel would come to him. He thought he would like to look into the bright eyes at close range. All he did was suddenly to freeze into one position,—in an instant rendered as motionless as the rather questionable-looking stone stork that was perched on the fountain.

He didn't know it, at the time, but it was a most meritorious piece of work. The truth was that he was acting solely by instinct. Men who have lived long in the wilderness learn a very important secret in dealing with wild animals. They know, in the first place, that intimacy with them is solely a matter of sitting still and making no sudden motions. It is motion, not shape, that frightens them. If a hunter is among a herd of deer and wishes to pick the bucks off, one by one, he simply sits still, moving his rifle with infinite caution, and the animal intelligence does not extend far enough to interpret him as an enemy. Instead of being afraid, the deer are usually only curious.

Dan simply sat still. The squirrel was very close to him, and Dan seemed to know by instinct that the movement of a single muscle would give him away. So he sat as if he were posing before a photographer's camera. The fact that he was able to do it is in itself important. It is considerably easier to exercise with dumb-bells for five minutes than to sit absolutely without motion for the same length of time. Hunters and naturalists acquire the art with training. It was therefore rather curious that Dan succeeded so well the first time he tried it. He had sense enough to relax first, before he froze. Thus he didn't put such a severe strain on his muscles. And this was another bit of wisdom that in a tenderfoot would have caused much wonder in certain hairy old hunters in the West.

The squirrel, after ten seconds had elapsed, stood on his haunches to see better. First he looked a long time with his left eye. Then he turned his head and looked very carefully with his right. Then he backed off a short distance and tried to get a focus with both. Then he came some half-dozen steps nearer.

A moment before he had been certain that a living creature—in fact one of the most terrible and powerful living creatures in the world—had been sitting on the park bench. Now his poor little brain was completely addled. He was entirely ready to believe that his eyes had deceived him.

All the time, Dan was sitting in perfectly plain sight. It wasn't as if he were hiding. But the squirrel had learned to judge all life by its motion alone, and he was completely at a loss to interpret or understand a motionless figure.

Bushy-tail drew off a little further, fully convinced at last that his hopes of a nut from a child's hand were blasted. But he turned to look once more. The figure still sat utterly inert. And all at once he forgot his devouring hunger in the face of an overwhelming curiosity.

He came somewhat nearer and looked a long time. Then he made a half-circle about the bench, turning his head as he moved. He was more puzzled than ever, but he was no longer afraid. His curiosity had become so intense that no room for fear was left. And then he sprang upon the park bench.

Dan moved then. The movement consisted of a sudden heightening of the light in his eyes. But the squirrel didn't see it. It takes a muscular response to be visible to the eyes of the wild things.

The squirrel crept slowly along the bench, stopping to sniff, stopping to stare with one eye and another, just devoured from head to tail with curiosity. And then he leaped on Dan's knee.

He was quite convinced, by now, that this warm perch on which he stood was the most singular and interesting object of his young life. It was true that he was faintly worried by the smell that reached his nostrils. But all it really did was further to incite his curiosity. He followed the leg up to the hip and then perched on the elbow. And an instant more he was poking a cold nose into Dan's neck.

But if the squirrel was excited by all these developments, its amazement was nothing compared to Dan's. It had been the most astounding incident in the man's life. He sat still, tingling with delight. And in a single flash of inspiration he knew he had come among his own people at last.

The creatures of the wild,—they were the folk he had always secretly loved and instinctively understood. His ancestors, for literally generations, had been frontiersmen and outdoor naturalists who never wrote books. Was it possible that they had bequeathed to him an understanding and love of the wild that most men did not have? But before he had time to meditate on this question, an idea seemed to pop and flame like a Roman candle in his brain. He knew where he would spend his last six months of life.

His own grandfather had been a hunter and trapper and frontiersman in a certain vast but little known Oregon forest. His son had moved to the Eastern cities, but in Dan's garret there used to be old mementoes and curios from these savage days,—a few claws and teeth, and a fragment of an old diary. The call had come to him at last. Tenderfoot though he was, Dan would go back to those forests, to spend his last six months of life among the wild creatures that made them their home.

II

The dinner hour found Dan Failing in the public library of Gitcheapolis, asking the girl who sat behind the desk if he might look at maps of Oregon. He got out the whole question without coughing once, but in spite of it she felt that he ought to be asking for California or Arizona maps, rather than Oregon. People did not usually go to Oregon to rid themselves of his malady. A librarian, as a rule, is a wonderfully well-informed person; but her mental picture of Oregon was simply one large rainstorm. She remembered that she used to believe that Oregon people actually grew webs between their toes, and the place was thus known as the Webfoot State. She didn't know that Oregon has almost as many climates as the whole of nature has in stock,—snow in the east, rain in the north, winds in the west, and sunshine in the south, with all the grades between. There are certain sections where in midwinter all hunters who do not particularly care to sink over