Did you ever notice, when a little troubled and agitated, how quickly you seemed to pass over the ground, and how speedily you arrived at the point whither you had not fairly decided to go?

It was so with Roxie, and while she was still considering whether after all she would go straight home, she was already at the entrance of the sunny southern glade where lay the patch of bright red berries whose faint, wholesome perfume told of their vicinity even before they could be seen.  Throwing herself upon her knees, the little girl pushed aside the glossy dark-green leaves, and with a low cry of delight stooped down and kissed the clusters of fragrant berries as they lay fresh and bright before her.

“O you dear, darling little things!” cried she, “how I love to see you again, and know that all the rest of the pretty things are coming right along!”

Then she began to pluck, and put them sometimes in her mouth, sometimes in her pail, and so long did she linger over her pleasant task that the sun was already in the tops of the pine-trees, when, returning from a little excursion into the woods to get a sprig from a “shad-bush,” Roxie halted just within the border of the little glade, and stood for a moment transfixed with horror.  Beside the pail she had left brim-full of berries, sat a bear-cub, scooping out the treasure with his paw, and greedily devouring it, apparently quite delighted that some one had saved him the trouble of gathering his favorite berries for himself.

One moment of dumb terror, and then a feeling of anger and reckless courage filled the heart of the woodsman’s child, and, darting forward, she made a snatch at her pail, at the same time dealing the young robber a sharp blow over the face and eyes with the branch of shad-bush in her hand, and exclaiming: 

“You great, horrid thing!  Every single berry is gone now, for I wont eat them after you.  So now!”

But, so far from being penitent or frightened, the bear took this interference, and especially the blow, in very bad part, and after a moment of blinking astonishment, he sat up on his haunches, growled a little, showed his teeth, and intimated very plainly that unless that pail of berries was restored at once, there would be trouble for some one.  But this was not the first bear-cub that Roxie had seen, and her temper was up as well as the bear’s.  So, firmly grasping the pail, she began to retreat backward, at first slowly, but as the bear dropped on his feet and seemed inclined to follow her, or rather the pail of berries, she lost courage, and turning, began to run, not caring or noting in what direction, and still mechanically grasping the pail of berries.