It was not easy for either Nancy or Olaf to give any connected account afterward of their adventure with the bear. Nancy could never describe it clearly at all, and Olaf, when questioned, gave a very simple version of the rescue.

“I saw the bear striking at them when I came near, so I just whanged her over the head with the milk-bucket, and she beat it.”

Dabney Mills, who had no knowledge at the time of what was happening, was able, perhaps, to give the most picturesque story of the three. Not even he, however, was able to deny that it was the milk-pail that saved the day. Olaf had been carrying it on his arm when he heard Nancy’s frantic cry for help, and he had never thought of setting it down, nor did he spill quite all of the contents as he ran to help her. He had come panting up the slope, just in time to see the bear’s blow graze the girl’s shoulder and rip away her sleeve. Being still out of reach, he had hurled the unwieldy tin bucket with all his might and with most successful aim. The clanging blow with which it struck startled Nancy, and the unexpected spectacle of a stream of white milk pouring over those black, furry shoulders made her feel that she had been bereft of her senses.

“And I have seen,” she said when she was trying to relate the tale to Beatrice, “what nobody else ever saw; I have seen a bear look surprised.”

Astonishment and horror seemed, indeed, to take instant possession of Mrs. Bruin, for she dropped from the ledge and made off through the bushes. The milk-pail, dislodged from where it had caught among the stones, rolled clanging and banging after her with a noise that lent even greater speed to her flight.

Olaf and Nancy stared at each other for a moment while his anxious face relaxed slowly into a broad grin and she burst out into irrepressible giggles. The strain of the terrible minutes that had just passed broke down suddenly into uncontrollable mirth so that gale after gale of laughter swept over them both. Nancy was so breathless from her desperate climb that laughing was painful, yet she could not check it and was forced to sit down upon the grass and lean against the rock wall in her helplessness. Olaf recovered first, rubbed his eyes, wet with laughter, on the sleeve of his coat, and was able to speak quite soberly.

“After all, it isn’t so funny,” he observed. He leaned far out over the precipice and looked down. “I thought you would go over before I got there.”

“We must look after Dabney Mills,” Nancy reminded him suddenly. “Suppose he had been killed!”

“If he had it would be by no fault of his,” Olaf muttered as he helped her to her feet and walked with her to where the reporter was sitting up, looking about him with a dazed expression.

“You were mighty slow coming,” he said morosely to Olaf. “That brute could have knocked us into kingdom come.”

He was feeling about vaguely, first in his pockets, then among the weeds and stones about him. A great blue bruise was spreading slowly over his face and neck.

“Have you lost something?” Nancy inquired.

“Just my note-book. I—I wanted to put something down in it.”

He seemed still to be somewhat stunned, but he got up and went with them down the hill. For some time he was silent, an unusual condition for him, but before they were halfway home he began to talk again, evidently composing a proper account of his adventure.

“A very dangerous, vicious animal!” he observed. “It was quite touch and go for a time, a very narrow escape! Of course, if I had been carrying any sort of weapon—” Nancy interrupted with an exclamation, and Olaf with a covert chuckle. She was about to declare very frankly that if Olaf had been unarmed and Dabney possessed of the milk-bucket, the affair would not have been very different. Olaf, however, dropped behind and spoke to her in an undertone:

“Please let him go on. He will talk himself into believing he was quite a hero, and I want to hear him do it.”

Aunt Anna was given a very mild account of the affair when they reached home, with little emphasis on the danger and a great deal on how absurd the bear had looked. Yet her eyes fell upon the deep scratches on Nancy’s arm and her torn sleeve, and then turned to Olaf with a look that made him suddenly glow with embarrassment and pride, but also made him bid them a panic-stricken good night. When Aunt Anna’s glance traveled to Dabney Mills who was beginning to relate his version of the story quite fluently, he paused, stammered, and declared that he, too, must be going. There was no one present who pressed him to stay.

“I will have to give this to Hester for her chickens,” said Nancy, surveying the wreck of her cake ruefully, just before she went to bed.

The girls had promised their aunt that they would not talk a great deal before they went to sleep, but they found it difficult to keep their word. Besides discussing the bear adventure they had also to talk over Dr. Minturn’s advice to Beatrice given that morning and heard by Nancy now for the first time.

“He said,” quoted Beatrice, “‘that we must not hurry a man who has been hurt to his very soul.’”

“I think the doctor was right,” the younger girl observed thoughtfully. “John Herrick—I can’t seem to call him anything else—must be just like Aunt Anna, with just such a will as hers. And the more he loved his family the more it must have hurt him to believe that they doubted his honor.”

“But suppose he never comes back to us,” said Beatrice. “Must we sit by and do nothing? He knew who we were from the first day we came here, but he has never made a sign.”

Although they had put out the light, the glowing hands of Beatrice’s wrist-watch reminded her of her promise. Nancy accordingly scurried into her own room to bed, and presumably dropped asleep as quickly as did Beatrice, who could hardly even remember laying her head upon the pillow.

It must have been several hours later that Beatrice awoke. She had slept so soundly that all her weariness was gone and the faintest of sounds outside had broken through the thin fabric of her dreams. She sat up, and turned to the window close beside her bed, to peer out and to listen.

It was moonlight again—a very clear night and so quiet that the big pine-trees stood as immovable as though they were a painted forest on the drop curtain of a theater. The white flood of light set into sharp relief the square frame of the window. Beatrice, looking at the ruffled white curtains, the twin pots of berries on the sill, and the row of books below, thought how quaintly cozy and homelike it looked in contrast to that ghostly wilderness outside. Then, as she leaned against the frame to look out, she drew a deep breath of astonishment.

Very evidently Aunt Anna had been unable to sleep and was sitting, wrapped in her big cloak, reading at the window just below, as was often her custom. A square of light on the ground below, and a shadow that moved a little now and then, as though for the turning of a page, made it plain that this was so. And opposite the window, in a clearing among the pines, some one was walking to and fro. It was John Herrick, with the moonlight on his fair hair and flooding the ground about him like a pool of still water. Somewhere in the dark behind him his horse was tied, for Beatrice, when she listened, could hear now and then the faint stamping of an impatient foot or the jingle of the bit.

If Aunt Anna heard the sounds, she did not distinguish them from the ordinary noises of the night, nor, with the lighted lamp beside her, could she see clearly anything that lay in the forest beyond. But Beatrice could guess, as surely as though she stood in the moonlight beside John Herrick, just how distinct before his eyes was the lighted window with his sister sitting beside it. She could imagine, even, just what that picture must mean to him, the glowing, s............