“Oh, I am so scared, little girl, aren’t you?  Let us protect each other somehow, or at least, you protect me.”

And Roxie, with a strange, light-hearted sense of security and peace replacing her terror and doubt, let the shaggy creature creep close to her side, and nestling down into his thick fur, warmed her freezing fingers against his skin, and with a smile upon her lips went peacefully to sleep.

She was awakened by a tremendous shock, and a struggle, and a fall into the water, and before she could see or know what had happened to her, two strong arms were round her, and she was drawn again upon the ice-cake, and her brother was bending close above her, and he was saying: 

“Oh, Roxie! are you hurt?”

“No, Jake, I—­I believe not.  Why, why, what is it all?  Where is this, and—­oh, I know.  Oh, Jake, Jake, I was so frightened!” And, turning suddenly, she hid her face in her brother’s coat and burst into a passion of tears.  But Jake, with one hurried embrace and kiss, put her away, saying: 

“Wait just a minute, sis, till we finish the bear; father will shoot him.”

“No, no, no!” screamed Roxie, her tears dried as if by magic.  “Don’t kill the bear, father!  Jake, don’t you touch the bear; he’s my friend, and we were both so scared last night, and then I prayed that he wouldn’t eat me, and he didn’t, and you mustn’t hurt him.”

“Well, I’m beat now!” remarked Mr. Beamish, as with both hands buried in the coarse hair by which he had dragged the bear to the surface, for it had gone under when the ice-cake had been broken against the jam of logs which had stopped it, he looked up at his little daughter’s pale face.

“You and the bear made friends, and said your prayers together, and he can’t be hurt, you say?”

“Yes, father.  Oh, please don’t hurt him!”

“We might take him home and keep him chained up for a sort of a pet, if he will behave decent,” suggested Jake, a little doubtfully.

“Well!—­I suppose we could,” replied the father, very slowly and reluctantly.  “He seems peaceable enough now.”

“And see how good he is to me,” said Roxie, eagerly, as she patted the head of her strange new friend, who blinked amicably in reply.  “Oh, Jake, do go and get Rob and the sled, and carry him home, wont you?”

“Why, yes, if father says so, and the critter will let me tie his legs.”

The ox-sled was close at hand, for the father and brother had brought it to the river before they began their weary search up and down its banks, not knowing what mournful burden they might have to carry home to the almost frantic mother.

And Bruin, a most intelligent beast, seemed to understand so well that the handling, and ride, were all for his own good, that he bore the humiliation of having his legs tied with considerable equanimity, and in a short time developed so gentle and gentlemanly a character as to become a valued and honored member of the family, remaining with it for about a year, when, wishing, probably, to set up housekeeping on his own account, he quietly snapped his chain one day and walked off into the woods, where he was occasionally seen for several years, generally near the checkerberry patch.