"Oh!" said Uncle Andy, emerging from the trees and taking in the situation. "You _are_ afloat, are you! I was afraid from the noise you made that you were sinking. Keep your hair on, and I'll be with you in five seconds. And we'll see what Bill's raft has to say for itself after such extraordinary behavior." Putting the canoe into the water, he thrust out, overtook the raft in a dozen strokes of his paddle, and proceeded to tow it back to the shore in disgrace. "What on earth did you make those dreadful noises for?" demanded Uncle Andy, "instead of simply calling for me, or Bill, to come and get you?" "You see, Uncle Andy," answered the Babe, after some consideration, "I was in a hurry, rather, and I thought you or Bill might be in a hurry, too, if I made a noise like that, instead of just calling." "Well, I believe," said Uncle Andy, seating himself on the bank and getting out his pipe, "that at last the unexpected has happened. I believe, in other words, that you are right. I once knew of a couple of youngsters who might have saved themselves and their parents a lot of trouble if they could have made some such sound as you did, at the right time. But they couldn't, or, at least, they didn't; and, therefore, things happened, which I'll tell you about if you like." The Babe carefully laid his string of fish in a cool place under some leaves, and then came and sat on the grass at his uncle's feet to listen. "They were an odd pair of youngsters," began Uncle Andy--and paused to get his pipe going. "They were a curious pair, and they eyed each other curiously. One was about five years old and the other about five months. One was all pink and white, and ruddy tan, and fluffy gold, and the other all glossy black. One, in fact, was a baby, and the other was a bear. "Neither had come voluntarily into this strange fellowship; and it would have been hard to say which of the pair regarded the other with most suspicion. The bear, to be sure, at five months old, was more grown up, more self-sufficing and efficient than the baby at five years; but he had the disadvantage of feeling himself an interloper. He had come to the raft quite uninvited, and found the baby in possession! On that account, of course, he rather expected the baby to show her white little teeth, and snarl at him, and try to drive him off into the water. In that case he would have resisted desperately, because he was in mortal fear of the boiling, seething flood. But he was very uneasy, and kept up a whimpering that was intended to be conciliatory; for though the baby was small, and by no means ferocious, he regarded her as the possessor of the raft, and it was an axiom of the wilds that very small and harmless-looking creatures might become dangerous when resisting an invasion of their rights.