Breakfast was over at the Profile, on the next morning; the stages had rolled away for Littleton, the Crawford and Plymouth; and preparations were in progress for a ride of two or three wagon-loads down the glen to the Flume,--when "H. T.," cigar in mouth, passed out from the bar-room to the piazza and thence across the plateau in front, towards the billiard-room and ten-pin-alley, standing a hundred yards away to the right, and at the very bottom of the slope of the mountain. He had seen, in the dusk and afterwards in the moonlight of the night before, that a couple of the rough pets of the mountain region were sojourning at the Notch, in the shape of half-grown black bears, chained to stakes some twenty feet apart, with a dog-kennel for their joint retreat, perhaps a hundred feet from the house and immediately in front of it, where their antics could be discerned and enjoyed from the piazza and the front windows. He had seen, too, going out earlier that morning, that they did not appear yet old enough to be dangerously vicious, and that they seemed very playful for that description of beast. Everybody was feeding them, from early morning to dusk, with nuts, raisins and crackers surreptitiously taken from the table for that purpose; and the youngsters no doubt consumed in feeding the young Bruins, quite as much food as they themselves managed to devour. Just then not less than a dozen persons were surrounding the household favorites, feeding them, putting them through their clumsy evolutions which principally consisted in sitting erect or climbing a short post to get a nut placed on the top,--or developing the usual human propensity for teazing. Most of them were ladies, and among the others, as he went by at a short distance, he recognized Miss Clara Vanderlyn, his fellow-passenger of the day before,--her face rosy with the excitement of a just-accomplished morning walk, her bonnet on arm, and her whole countenance radiant with amusement as she plied the dusky pets with her pocket full of nuts and raisins. She seemed to have acquired a wonderful ascendancy over the beasts in a very brief acquaintance; for while all the others shrank from coming absolutely within reach, she not only fed them without fear but rubbed their black coats and patted their gristly noses as if they had been pet kittens. Two or three men were lounging near, evidently admiring the new lady accession to Profile society, but none claiming an acquaintance.