260 NEIGHBOURS UNKNOWN 



eyes smarting savagely, his nose and lips 

 scorched, his wet fur singed, he hardly realized, 

 at first, his escape, but raced straight on 

 across the fields for several hundred yards. 

 Then, at the edge of a wood, he stopped and 

 looked back. The little bear was nowhere to 

 be seen. The night wind, here, blew de- 

 liciously cool upon his face. But there was 

 the mad red monster, roaring and raging 

 still as if it would eat up the world. The 

 terror of it was in his veins. He sprang 

 into the covert of the wood, and ran wildly, 

 with the one impulse to get as far away as 

 possible. 



Before he had gone two miles, he came out 

 upon an open country of fields, and pastures, 

 and farmyards, and little thickets. Straight 

 on he galloped, through the gardens and the 

 farmyards as well as the open fields. In the 

 pastures the cattle, roused by the glare in 

 the sky, stamped and snorted at him as he 

 passed, and now and then a man's voice 

 yelled at him angrily as his long form tore 

 through flower-beds or trellised vines. He 

 had no idea of avoiding the farmhouses, 

 for he had at first no fear of men ; but at 

 length an alert farmer got a long shot at him 

 with a fowling-piece, and two or three small 

 leaden pellets caught him in the hindquarters. 



