Sometimes the monotony of the palmettos was broken by great live-oak trees, which reached high into the air, and whose massive branches, often curiously grotesque and crooked, bore not only their own bright and glossy leaves, but were covered throughout their length with vines and various fern-like growths, while from the lower part of these limbs, and from the trunks and branches of many other trees, hung long and graceful festoons of the silver-gray Spanish moss. The bark of many of the palmetto trunks was relieved by splotches of bright red, and here and there, sometimes on dead trees and sometimes on living ones, there were air-plants, their roots fastened in the dry wood, and their long, bending leaves stretching out into the air for the nutriment which most plants draw up from the earth. Phil was greatly interested in all these things, and Adam gazed about him with much satisfaction, although he had often walked in such woods before. He had been so long on ships and steamboats that this woodland ramble was a pleasant change. Phil stopped to cut some of the red patches of bark from a palmetto near him, hoping to be able to carry the pieces home to show as curiosities, and thus his companion had got some distance ahead of him. Adam was walking quietly along, when suddenly he heard, from a clump of thick bushes to his right, a low but very peculiar sound. It was a series of little whimpers and sniffs, that would not have been heard at all if the woods had not been so quiet. Instantly Adam stopped. He was sure he recognized that sound. Turning to the point whence it came, he peered earnestly into the shrubbery. Just above a low, heavy bush, not a dozen feet away from him, he saw the top of a round, black head, and a pair of glistening eyes. Without hesitating for a moment, he cocked both barrels of his gun, and taking a quick aim just above the eyes he saw before him, he pulled both triggers. A loud report rang through the forest, and the head disappeared. Phil, astounded by the discharge of the gun, started to run toward Adam, but the latter waved him back, and retreating a short distance, began rapidly reloading. When this was done, he waited a few minutes, and then, closely followed by Phil, he approached the bush at which he had fired. Hearing nothing but the little whimpers which had before attracted his attention, he cautiously made his way around the bush, his gun cocked and ready for instant use. But there was no occasion to use it. Upon the ground lay a large she-bear, dead, with twelve buckshot in her brain. In a slightly-hollowed place in the ground behind her were two young bears, about a foot long, round and fat, and rolling and pawing each other, while they continually sniffed and whimpered as if they wanted something, but did not know what it was. [Illustration: Adam tucking the other under his left arm.] Phil gave a shout of triumph when he hurried up behind Adam and saw the dead bear.