He went directly to the tree where the dead bear had lain, and examined the snow carefully. He soon found a well-defined trail that led farther back into the woods. This he followed easily, and it brought him to an old fallen hemlock, which was partly covered with snow. The tracks led into the deepest, thickest portion of the top and there ended at the mouth of a burrow that had been tunneled down underneath.
The hunter got a long pole and prodded about in the tree-top until he satisfied himself that there was nothing formidable inside. Then setting his gun against a tree trunk, he crawled into the burrow.
He had entered only three or four feet, when a weak, pitiful whine greeted his ears. "Just as I thought," he muttered. "There are cubs here."
A few feet farther down he found them,—two astonishingly small bear-cubs. One whined pitifully and struggled to his feet as though in anticipation of supper, but the other was cold and stiff. It had evidently been dead for some time.
The excited bear-hunter took them both in his arms and clambered out of the den, feeling well repaid for his search.
Holding the cub that was still alive under his coat for warmth and protection from the wind, he hurried home, while the hound leaped about him and sniffed suspiciously at his coat.
His wife was sitting in the cozy kitchen sewing, and occasionally jogging the cradle, when he entered and, without a word of explanation, dropped the live cub in her lap.
"O John," she cried, "what a dear little dog he is. Where did you get him?"
"Under an old tree-top in the woods," he replied. "It isn't a puppy, it is a bear-cub.
"Here is his brother," and he held up the dead cub for her inspection. "I guess the old bear came round and stole your baby to take the place of her dead cub. There are tracks behind the house where she came up to the window and stood upon her hind legs and looked in. Sort of taking inventory, as you might say."