The boy meant to use the last moment to think out some way to save himself, but, anxious and distraught as he was, his thoughts wandered again.  Now he began thinking of all that he had seen when he flew over the mining districts.  It was strange that there should be so much life and activity and so much work back there in the wilderness.

“Just think how poor and desolate this place would be had there been no iron here!

“This very foundry gave employment to many, and had gathered around it many homes filled with people, who, in turn, had attracted hither railways and telegraph wires and—­”

“Come, come!” growled the bear.  “Will you or won’t you?”

The boy swept his hand across his forehead.  No plan of escape had as yet come to his mind, but this much he knew—­he did not wish to do any harm to the iron, which was so useful to rich and poor alike, and which gave bread to so many people in this land.

“I won’t!” he said.

Father Bear squeezed him a little harder, but said nothing.

“You’ll not get me to destroy the ironworks!” defied the boy.  “The iron is so great a blessing that it will never do to harm it.”

“Then of course you don’t expect to be allowed to live very long?” said the bear.

“No, I don’t expect it,” returned the boy, looking the bear straight in the eye.

Father Bear gripped him still harder.  It hurt so that the boy could not keep the tears back, but he did not cry out or say a word.

“Very well, then,” said Father Bear, raising his paw very slowly, hoping that the boy would give in at the last moment.

But just then the boy heard something click very close to them, and saw the muzzle of a rifle two paces away.  Both he and Father Bear had been so engrossed in their own affairs they had not observed that a man had stolen right upon them.

“Father Bear!  Don’t you hear the clicking of a trigger?” cried the boy.  “Run, or you’ll be shot!”

Father Bear grew terribly hurried.  However, he allowed himself time enough to pick up the boy and carry him along.  As he ran, a couple of shots sounded, and the bullets grazed his ears, but, luckily, he escaped.

The boy thought, as he was dangling from the bear’s mouth, that never had he been so stupid as he was to-night.  If he had only kept still, the bear would have been shot, and he himself would have been freed.  But he had become so accustomed to helping the animals that he did it naturally, and as a matter of course.

When Father Bear had run some distance into the woods, he paused and set the boy down on the ground.

“Thank you, little one!” he said.  “I dare say those bullets would have caught me if you hadn’t been there.  And now I want to do you a service in return.  If you should ever meet with another bear, just say to him this—­which I shall whisper to you—­and he won’t touch you.”