One warm March morning the mistress thought she heard some one in the back room, and supposing that a neighbor had come in, opened the door.
The intruder was no stranger to the family, for there was Black Bruin, standing on his hind legs, licking off the sticky outside of a maple-syrup pail. He had remembered his old delight in syrup.
Perhaps he had even got a whiff of the sweet on the spring air, and his nose had told him what was going on. The bear's scent is very keen, and this and his acute hearing make up for his poor eyesight.
Black Bruin, on his reappearance, was at once taken back into the family's affection, and petted and spoiled, all of which seemed to suit him admirably.
For a week or two, however, he would eat very little, and appeared to come to his appetite gradually. At first the good people thought he was sick, but an old woodsman explained to them that the bear was always fastidious after hibernation. In the wild state he will eat only buds and grasses, and perhaps a very few roots. He is wise, after the way of the wild beasts, and knows that his digestive organs are not in condition to do hard work; but when the right hour comes, he will have a meal that will make up for much fasting.
The roguishness and capacity for mischief that Black Bruin had shown during his first year of cubhood, increased tenfold, as he grew older and stronger.
Tree-climbing, which he had learned late in the summer of his first year, became a passion with him. He climbed the elms and the maples along the road and the fruit trees in the orchard. In the barn, too, he clambered about on the scaffolds and pried into all the corners with his inquisitive nose.
A neighbor's boy often came to the farmhouse to romp and wrestle with the bear-cub. Nothing pleased him more than a rough-and-tumble, and he was quite an expert wrestler, once he learned how to floor his adversary.
Whenever two or three boys came into the farmyard, if Black Bruin was anywhere about, he would shuffle up to them and rearing upon his hind legs, invite them, in the plainest language, "to come on."
His master also taught him to hold a broom in his arms in imitation of a gun, and march up and down like a soldier. When this feat was performed by their shaggy friend, the children would shout with delight, at which the cub would loll out his tongue and seem greatly pleased. He appeared to understand clearly that they thought him the smartest bear in the world.