At about twelve o’clock of the night our watch came into camp and informed us that a bear had just entered the copse. In an instant each sprung to his feet and into the saddle. It was a still, cloudless night, and the moonlight lay in sheets on rivulet, rock, and plain. We proceeded with a cautious, noiseless step, through the moist grass of the pasture to the copse in its centre, where each one took his station, forming a cordon around the little grove. The horse was the first to discover, through the glimmering shade, the stealthful movements of his antagonist. His ears were thrown forward, his nostrils distended, his breathing became heavy and oppressed, and his large eye was fixed immovably on the dim form of the savage animal. Each rider now uncoiled his lasso from its loggerhead, and held it ready to spring from his hand, like a hooped serpent from the brake. The bear soon discovered the trap that had been laid for him; plunged from the thicket, broke through the cordon, and was leaping, with giant bounds, over the cleared plot for the dark covert of the forest beyond. A shout arose—a hot pursuit followed, and lasso after lasso fell in curving lines around the bear, till at last one looped him around the neck and brought him to a momentary stand. As soon as bruin felt the lasso, he growled his defiant thunder, and sprung in rage at the horse. Here came in the sagacity of that noble animal. He knew, as well as his rider, that the safety of both depended on his keeping the lasso taught, and without the admonitions of rein or spur, bounded this way and that, to the front or rear, to accomplish his object, never once taking his eye from the ferocious foe, and ever in an attitude to foil his assaults. The bear, in desperation, seized the lasso in his griping paws, and hand over hand drew it into his teeth: a moment more and he would have been within leaping distance of his victim; but the horse sprung at the instant, and, with a sudden whirl, tripped the bear and extricated the lasso. At this crowning feat the horse fairly danced with delight. A shout went up which seemed to shake the wild-wood with its echoes. The bear plunged again, when the lasso slipped from its loggerhead, and bruin was instantly leaping over the field to reach his jungle. The horse, without spur or rein, dashed after him. While his rider, throwing himself over his side, and hanging there like a lamper-eel to a flying sturgeon, recovered his lasso, bruin was brought up again all standing, more frantic and furious than before; while the horse pranced and curveted around him like a savage in his death-dance over his doomed captive. In all this no overpowering torture was inflicted on old bruin, unless it were through his own rage,—which sometimes towers so high he drops dead at your feet. He was now lassoed to a sturdy oak, and wound so closely to its body by riata over riata, as to leave him no scope for breaking or grinding off his clankless