“Are you scared, mother?” Twinkly Eyes kept asking. Mother Black Bear glanced about, this way and that. On every side, as far as she could see, there were just five or six kinds of trees, oaks, poplars, willows, maples, elms and ash trees, all growing to nearly the same height. Here and there was a blackened trunk standing gaunt and naked where the lightning had struck. For these trees, as every woodsman knows, are the very ones most likely to be struck. “I don’t like to get caught in these woods,” insisted Mother Black Bear, starting off at a brisk pace along the southern border of the lake. It was all the cubs could do to follow, paddling along on their chubby legs with panting breath and red tongues lolling from their little black muzzles. “I can’t keep up,” whispered Twinkly Eyes who brought up the rear. “Lightning waits for no one,” rumbled Mother Black Bear, refusing to slow down even a mite. A nearer crash of thunder, as the first big raindrops began to fall, sent her forward on the run. “Where are we going?” asked Woof, who rather enjoyed the excitement. “We’re going to find the kind of trees lightning doesn’t strike,” Mother Black Bear flung behind her without stopping. “Beech, birch, chestnut, basswood!” She broke into a run. “Oh, mother—those white birches over behind Pollywog pond,” gasped Woof, trying his best to keep up with her through the pelting rain. “Just where we are headed,” rumbled Mother Black Bear. “If only—we can reach them—in time!” A blinding flash of lightning darted down the trunk of a huge old oak to the left. This time the thunder seemed to come at the same instant. Mother Black Bear looked back over her shoulder. Woof was close behind,—but where was Twinkly Eyes? She turned instantly to find out. XII A WILD MOTHER’S LOVE At the instant of the lightning flash that came so near, Mother Black Bear had been racing for dear life to get to the safe shelter of the birch grove. She knew that lightning is not so apt to strike in a birch grove as in the giant oaks where the storm had found them. But then the cubs had both been close at her heels. The instant she missed Twinkly Eyes she turned back to find him. He lay flat on the ground, his heels in the air, just where he had tumbled when the big crash came. He was so frightened that he could scarce regain his feet. His legs trembled till he could go no further. Mother Black Bear tried her best to carry him in her mouth, but he was so fat and roly-poly and wiggled so at every clap of thunder that she had to give it up. Woof, who was close at her heels every minute, was all for climbing the tallest tree they could find, but Mother Black Bear selected a comparatively open patch with no tree higher than its neighbors; and there she crouched beside the cubs, covering them with her own body when the big drops turned to hailstones.