in a cold unsympathetic way, infinitely more distressing to a nervous creature than the cheerful ringing of a whole field. To hunt in silence would be hard for any man; to be hunted in silence is intolerable.

Grisly held his head down and wagged it from side to side, while his great silent paws rapidly cleared the ground and lessened the distance.

"Tommy," whispered the young fellow, "I can cover him now."

"Wait, Jack. Don't miss. Give Grisly two minutes more. Gad! how the fellow scuds!"

Tommy, you see, obeyed the instinct of nature. He loved the hunt: if not to hunt actively, to witness a hunt. It is the same feeling which crowds the benches at a bullfight in Spain. It was the same feeling which lit up the faces in the Coliseum when Hermann, formerly of the Danube, prisoner, taken red-handed in revolt, and therefore moriturus, performed with vigour, sympathy, and spirit the rôle of Actæon, ending, as we all know, in a splendid chase by bloodhounds; after which the poor Teuton, maddened by his long flight and exhausted by his desperate resistance, was torn to pieces, fighting to the end with a rage past all acting. It is our modern pleasure to read of pain and suffering. Those were the really pleasant days to the Roman ladies when they actually witnessed living agony.

"Give Grisly two minutes," said Captain Ladds.

By this time the rest of the party had come up, and were watching the movements of man and bear. In the plain stood the framework of a ruined wooden house. Man made for log-house. Bear, without any apparent effort, but just to show that he saw the dodge, and meant that it should not succeed, put on a spurt, and the distance between them lessened every moment. Fifty yards; forty yards. Man looked round over his shoulder. The log-house was a good two hundred yards ahead. He hesitated; seemed to stop for a moment. Bear diminished the space by a good dozen yards—and then man doubled.

"Getting pumped," said Ladds the critical. Then he too dismounted, and stood beside the younger man, giving the reins of both horses to one of the Mexicans. "Mustn't let Grisly claw the poor devil," he murmured.

"Let me bring him down, Tommy."

"Bring him down, young un."

The greasers looked on and laughed. It would have been to them a pleasant termination to the "play" had Bruin clawed the man. Neither hunter nor quarry saw the party clustered together on the rising ground on which the track ran. Man saw nothing but the ground over which he flew; bear saw nothing but man before him. The doubling manæuvre was, however, the one thing needed to bring Grisly within easy reach. Faster flew the man, but it was the last flight of despair; had the others been near enough they would have seen the cold drops of agony standing on his forehead; they would have caught his panting breath, they would have heard his muttered prayer.

"Let him have it!" growled Ladds.

It was time. Grisly, swinging along with leisurely step, rolling his great head from side to side in time with the cadence of his footfall—one roll to every half-dozen strides, like a fat German over a trois-temps waltz, suddenly lifted his face, and roared. Then the man shrieked: then the bear stopped, and raised himself for a moment, pawing in the air; then he dropped again, and rushed with quickened step upon his foe; then—but then—ping! one shot. It has struck Grisly in the shoulder; he stops with a roar.

"Good, young un!" said Ladds, bringing piece to shoulder. This time Grisly roars no more. He rolls over. He is shot to the heart, and is dead.

The other participator in this chasse of two heard the crack of the rifles. His senses were growing dazed with fear; he did not stop, he ran on still, but with trembling knees and outstretched hands; and when he came to a heap of shingle and sand—one of those left over from the old surface-mines—he fell headlong on the pile with a cry, and could not rise. The two who shot the bear ran across the ground—he lay almost at their feet—to secure their prey. After them, at a leisurely pace, strode John, the servant. The greasers stayed behind and laughed.

"Grisly's dead," said Tommy, pulling out his knife. "Steak?"

"No; skin," cried the younger. "Let me take his skin. John, we will have the beast skinned. You can get some steaks cut. Where is the man?"

They found him lying on his face, unable to move.

"Now, old man," said the young fellow cheerfully, "might as well sit up, you know, if you can't stand. Bruin's gone to the happy hunting-grounds."

The man sat up, as desired, and tried to take a comprehensive view of the position.

Jack handed him a flask, from which he took a long pull. Then he got up, and somewhat ostentatiously began to smooth down the legs of his trousers.

He was a thin man, about five and forty years of age; he wore an irregular and patchy kind of beard, which flourished exceedingly on certain square half-inches of chin and cheek, and was as thin as grass at Aden on the intervening spaces. He had no boots; but a sort of moccasins, the lightness of which enabled him to show his heels to the bear for so long a time. His trousers might have been of a rough tweed, or they might have been black cloth, because grease, many drenchings, the buffeting of years, and the holes into which they were worn, had long deprived them of their original colour and brilliancy. Above the trousers he wore a tattered flannel shirt, the right arm of which, nearly torn to pieces, revealed a tattooed limb, which was strong although thin; the buttons had long ago vanished from the front of the garment; thorns picturesquely replaced them. He wore a red-cotton handkerchief round his neck, a round felt hat was on his head; this, like the trousers, had lost its pristine colour, and by dint of years and weather, its stiffness too. To prevent the hat from flapping in his eyes, its possessor had pinned it up with thorns in the front.

Necessity is the mother of invention: there is nothing morally wrong in the use of thorns where other men use studs, diamond pins, and such gauds; and the effect is picturesque. The stranger, in fact, was a law unto himself. He had no coat; the rifle of Californian civilisation was missing; there was no sign of knife or revolver; and the only encumbrance, if that was any, to the lightness of his flight was a small wooden box strapped round tightly, and hanging at his back by means of a steel chain, grown a little rusty where it did not rub against his neck and shoulders.

He sat up and winked involuntarily with both eyes. This was the effect of present bewilderment and late fear.

Then he looked round him, after, as before explained, a few moments of assiduous leg-smoothing, which, as stated above, looked ostentatious, but was really only nervous agitation. Then he rose, and saw Grisly lying in a heap a few yards off. He walked over with a grave face, and looked at him.

When Henri Balafré, Duc de Guise, saw Coligny lying dead at his feet, he is said—only it is a wicked lie—to have kicked the body of his murdered father's enemy. When Henri III. of France, ten years later, saw Balafré dead at his feet, he did kick the lifeless body, with a wretched joke. The king was a cur. My American was not. He stood over Bruin with a look in his eyes which betokened respect for fallen greatness and sympathy with bad luck. Grisly would have been his victor, but for the chance which brought him within reach of a friendly rifle.

"A near thing," he said. "Since I've been in this doggoned country I've had one or two near things, but this was the nearest."

The greasers stood round the body of the bear, and the English servant was giving directions for skinning the beast.

"And which of you gentlemen," he went on with a nasal twang more pronounced than before—perhaps with more emphasis on the word "gentlemen" than was altogether required—"which of you gentlemen was good enough to shoot the critter?"

The English servant, who