I’d like to know?” Perk objected, hardly liking to give up his side of the case so easily.

“Why, from away back bears have been in the habit of climbing trees whenever they felt like it,” the tall boy told him; “and there’s nothing in the Constitution of the United States that’s going to make ’em change their habits either—that is, black bears. It’s a different thing with grizzlies out in the Rocky Mountain country, I understand; they keep to the ground.”

Perk sighed with real relief as he hurriedly remarked, and quite cheerfully at that:

“Well, I’m glad to know I was mistaken. It gave me a bad feeling to think that ugly tramp was spying on us. Yes, now the thing shifts again, and sure enough I can make him out plainly. It’s a real live bear—not a monster, but pretty hefty for all that.”

Amos darted into the cabin.

“Now what’s he after, I want to know?” Perk quickly asked.

“Just as like as not, that camera of his,” Elmer explained. “Amos is crazy on the subject of photography, and his first thought always is, ‘Will it make a striking picture?’ I reckon he thinks he might be able to creep up close enough to snap that chap off, up in the beechnut tree.”

Sure enough out came Amos on the run, and gripping his ready camera.

“I’d like to get him the worst kind, fellows!” he told them. “Some of the boys at home will laugh at us when we tell them we actually saw a black bear up in a tree. I’d make them feel like thirty cents if I could hold up a photo of the happening, taken at closer quarters than this.”

“We’ll all go along, Amos,” suggested Elmer.

Possibly he fancied that the others might find their presence useful in some way or other. It might be wise, Elmer even suspected, since the rash photographer, in his burning desire to get a close view, might run foul of the claws of Bruin, and need material assistance.

“Glad to have you,” agreed Amos, a faint smile coming on his usually wan face; “but let’s hurry, please, because the bear might take a notion to come down, and then my chance would be gone.”

“Follow me,” Elmer told him. “We’ve just got to swing around a bit so as to come up to leeward, for he’d be apt to scent us if we kept straight on down the wind.”

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