The boy listened and then crept cautiously toward the bushes. He also heard queer little crying sounds that were almost plaintive. "Huh!" he said boldly. "'Tisn't anything that would hurt us. Sounds to me like kittens crying for their mother." A joyful shout from the girl, closely following him, turned into "Gerry! That's just what they are! Great big kittens! See how comically they sprawl? They haven't learned to walk yet. Their little legs aren't strong enough to stand on. See, I can pick one right up. He doesn't seem to mind a bit." The small girl suited the action to the word, and it was well for her that the mother lion had been killed, or Julie would soon have been badly torn, despite the fact that her brother still carried his small gun. The boy had lifted the other weak creature, which had not been alive many days, and, with much curious questioning as to what kind of "pussy cats" they might be, they continued their walk and soon reached the cabin. Meg Heger, who had remained long in the forest that day, having sought a rare lichen high on the mountain, was just descending from the trail that led into her "botany gardens" when she saw the two children entering the front yard of her home cabin. Unbuckling the basket which she carried much as an Indian squaw carries a pappoose, the girl leaped down the rocks and exclaimed: "Oh, children, where did you find those darling little mountain lion babies?" Luckily she took the one Julie was holding in her own arms as she spoke, for if she had not, that particular "baby" would have had a hard fall, for when the small girl from the East heard that she was actually holding a mountain lion, she uttered a little frightened scream and let go her hold. But Gerald, being a boy, realized that even a future fierce wild animal was harmless when its legs were too weak for it to stand on, and so he continued to hold his pet, even venturing to admire it. "It's a little beauty, ain't--I mean, isn't it?" He glanced quickly at Julie, but the slip had evidently not been observed, for she was intently watching the mountain girl, who was caressing the little creature she held as though she loved it, as she did everything that lived in all the wilderness. But as Meg Heger held that helpless, hungry baby her heart was sad, for well she knew that it was unprotected and perhaps starving because she had shot and killed its mother. Of course she had to kill the lion to save the life of the lad who had gone too close to the place where the mother had her young; but, nevertheless, she felt that, in a way, her act had made her responsible for these helpless little wild creatures, since they had been brought to her. Brightly she turned to the children. "Don't you want to come with me to the hospital?" she invited. "We'll give them some supper."