demanded the other, lifting his head.

“Why, there he is right now, perched in that beechnut tree up on the knoll yonder. You can see the dark mass move if you look sharp! Of course he’s spying on the camp; and I bet you he’s got it all fixed to visit us this very night!”

 CHAPTER VIITHE CLIMBER OF THE BEECH TREE 

CHAPTER VII

THE CLIMBER OF THE BEECH TREE

“Ginger! there is something big and black up in that tree, as sure as you live!” exclaimed Wee Willie, excitedly.

Both Elmer and Amos also stared. Apparently they found it necessary to agree with what the tall chum had just said. It looked as though humble Perk had scored again; somehow he seemed to be connected with almost everything that had happened to them thus far; when as a usual thing such events took delight in passing him by.

“There, didn’t you see him move?” he added, with a tinge of triumph in his voice. “Just think of his nerve, climbing that tree to watch what we do. If he’d been a signal-sender in the old Boy Scout days at Chester, before the troop busted up, he couldn’t have picked out a better location. I bet you he’s watching us right now. What ought we do about it, Elmer?”

Considerably to the astonishment of the speaker, Elmer was heard to give an unmistakable chuckle, as though something amused him.

“Well,” he went on to say, “we might walk out there and tell that party we objected to his company; but the chances are he’d sniff at us, and amble away; for you see it’s only a bear!”

“A bear!” gasped Perk, turning again to fasten his eyes on the mysterious object perched high in the big beech tree.

“Yes, a black bear, and I reckon a half-grown cub at that, else he wouldn’t be so fresh as to climb a tree so near our camp,” the other continued; while Wee Willie nodded his head in affirmation, and hastened to corroborate the statement by saying:

“No doubt about it, Perk, your hobo is a four-legged tramp, all right. I c’n make him out plainly, now he’s moved a bit; though at first I began to think it might be a man sitting astride a limb.”

“But what’s a bear doing up there, 

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