Then the old sweet smell, that was to him what whisky is to the drunkard, brought back a familiar picture. It was of a farmhouse with barns and many out-buildings. There were hens, ducks and turkeys in the yard and back of the house was a row of beehives that always emitted this ravishing odor.
It was honey, and at the realization Black Bruin could almost hear the low droning of the hive, or the angry zip, zip of the bees about his ears as he robbed them.
Again the night-wind brought the man-scent and the smell of honey. The former filled him with fear and the latter with delight. Again and again he tested the wind, weighing the two odors, and at last the honey conquered.
The man might fill him with thorns and prickers from his thunder and lightning stick, but he must have some of that honey.
Grandpa Butterfield was walking leisurely along humming a psalm tune, as was his wont when well pleased with the world, when he thought he heard something behind him in the road.
He stopped and listened, but all was still. Only the usual night-sounds came to his ears. But when he moved on, he felt sure that the footsteps again followed.
At last he reached a point where the moonlight fell across the road. He now felt quite sure that something was coming after him but what, he could not imagine. Feeling curious, and a bit uneasy, for the road was a lonely one, he turned and looked behind and there, in the full moonlight, not forty feet away, he beheld a huge black bear following surely in his footsteps.
There was no deceiving his eye. He had seen too many bears in days gone by.
Grandpa Butterfield quickened his walk to a trot, which in a dozen steps he increased to as lively a run as a man of seventy years could muster.
Black Bruin, feeling, now that the man was running, he was afraid of him, and seeing his precious honey rapidly moving away down the road, went in hot pursuit.