In the meanwhile Mr. Bruin had it all his own way in the mountains, killed a young bull or a fat heifer for his dinner every day or two, chased in pure sport a herd of sheep over a precipice; and as for Lars Moe's bay mare Stella, he nearly finished her, leaving his claw-marks on her flank in a way that spoiled her beauty forever.

Now Lars Moe himself was too old to hunt; and his nephew was—well, he was not old enough. There was, in fact, no one in the valley who was of the right age to hunt this Gausdale Bruin. It was of no use that Lars Moe egged on the young lads to try their luck, shaming them, or offering them rewards, according as his mood might happen to be.

He was the wealthiest man in the valley, and his mare Stella had been the apple of his eye. He felt it as a personal insult that the bear should have dared to harm what belonged to him, especially the most precious of all his possessions. It cut him to the heart to see the poor wounded beauty, with those cruel scratches on her thigh, and one stiff, aching leg done up in oil and cotton.

When he opened the stable-door, and was greeted by Stella's low, friendly neighing, or when she limped forward in her box-stall and put her small, well-shaped head on his shoulder, then Lars Moe's heart swelled until it seemed on the point of breaking.

And so it came to pass that he added a codicil to

his will, setting aside five hundred dollars of his estate as a reward to the man who, within six years, should kill the Gausdale Bruin.

Soon after that Lars Moe died, as some said, from grief and anger; though the physician declared that it was of rheumatism of the heart. At any rate, the codicil relating to the enchanted bear was duly read before the church door, and pasted, among other notices, in the vestibules of the judge's and the sheriff's offices. When the executors had settled up the estate, the question arose in whose name or to whose credit should be deposited the money which was to be set aside for the benefit of the bear-slayer. No one knew who would kill the bear, or if any one would kill it. It was a puzzling question.

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Why, deposit it to the credit of the bear," said one executor; "then, in the absence of other heirs, his slayer will inherit it. That is good old Norwegian practice, though I don't know whether it has ever been the law."

"All right," said the other executors, "so long as it is understood who is to have the money, it does not matter."

And so an amount equal to five hundred dollars was deposited in the county bank to the credit of the Gausdale Bruin. Sir Barry Worthington, who came to Norway the following summer for the shooting, heard the story, and thought it a good one. So, after having

vainly tried to earn the prize himself, he added another five hundred dollars to the deposit, with the condition that he was to have the skin.

But his rival for political honors, Robert Stapleton, the great iron-master, who had come to Norway chiefly to outshine Sir Barry, determined that he was to have the skin of that famous bear, if any one was to have it, and that, at all events, Sir Barry should not have it. So Mr. Stapleton added seven hundred and fifty dollars to the bear's bank account, with the condition that the skin should come to him.

Mr. Bruin, in the meanwhile, as if to resent this quarreling about the possession of his skin, did more damage among the herds than ever, and compelled several peasants to move their dairies to other parts of the mountains, where the pastures were poorer, but where they would be free from his robberies. If the one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars in the bank had been meant as a bribe for good behavior, such as was formerly paid to Italian brigands, it certainly could not have had a more opposite effect; for all agreed that, since Lars Moe's death, Bruin misbehaved more than ever.

prec'ipice: a steep place, a cliff.—cod'icil: an addition to a will, usually made some time after the will itself.-exec'utors: people appointed to see that a will is carried out.

THE BEAR THAT HAD A BANK ACCOUNT

PART II

There was an odd clause in Lars Moe's will besides the codicil relating to the bear. It read:

"I hereby give and bequeath to my daughter Unna, or, in case of her decease, to her oldest living child, my bay mare, Stella, as a token that I have forgiven her the sorrow she caused me by her marriage."

It seemed unbelievable that Lars Moe should wish to play a practical joke (and a bad one at that) on his only child, his daughter Unna, because she had displeased him by her marriage. Yet that was the common opinion in the valley when this singular clause became known. Unna had married Thorkel Tomlevold, a poor man, and had refused her cousin, the great lumber-dealer, Morten Janson, whom her father had selected for a son-in-law.

She dwelt now in a cottage, northward in the parish; and her husband, who was a sturdy and finelooking fellow, made a living by hunting and fishing. But they surely had no place for a broken-down, wounded, trotting mare, which could not even draw a plough.

It is true Unna, in the days of her girlhood, had been very fond of the mare, and it is only charitable to suppose that the clause, which was in the body of the will, was written while Stella was in her prime, and

before she had suffered at the paws of the Gausdale Bruin. But even granting that, one could scarcely help suspecting malice aforethought in the curious clause.

To Unna the gift was meant to say, as plainly as possible, "There, you see what you have lost by disobeying your father! If you had married according to his wishes, you would have been able to accept the gift, while now you are obliged to decline it like a beggar."

But if it was Lars Moe's intention to convey such a message to his daughter, he failed to take into account his daughter's spirit. She appeared plainly but decently dressed at the reading of the will, and carried her head not a bit less proudly than was her wont in her maiden days. She exhibited no anger when she found that Janson was her father's heir and that she was disinherited. She even listened with perfect composure to the reading of the clause which bequeathed to her the broken-down mare.

It at once became a matter of pride with her to accept her girlhood's favorite, and accept it she did! And having borrowed a side-saddle, she rode home, apparently quite contented. A little shed, or lean-to, was built in the rear of the house, and Stella became a member of Thorkel Tomlevold's family. Odd as it may seem, the fortunes of the family took a turn for the better from the day she arrived; Thorkel rarely came home without big game, and in his traps he