It was the cold air rushing into the room as the door was pushed ajar that aroused the boys.  After one surprised glance they sat up, for the man, who was slipping into the room as stealthily as a burglar, was the worst-looking tramp they had ever seen.  There was a long, ugly red scar across his face, running from his cheek to the middle of his forehead, and partly closing one eye.  Perhaps it was the scar that gave him such a queer, evil sort of an expression; even without it he would have been a repulsive sight.  His clothes were dirty and ragged, and his breath had frozen in icicles on his stubby red beard.

Behind him came a boy no larger than Keith, but with a hard, shrewd look in his hungry little face that made one feel he had lived a long time and learned more than was good for him to know.  It was plain to be seen that he was nearly starved, and suffering from the intense cold.  His bare toes peeped through their ragged shoes, and he had no coat.  A thin cotton shirt and a piece of an old gray horse-blanket was all that protected his shoulders from the icy wind of that February afternoon.  He, too, crept in noiselessly, as if expecting to be ordered out at the first sound, and then turned to coax in some animal that was tied to one end of the rope which he held.

Malcolm and Keith looked on with interest, and sprang up excitedly as the animal finally shuffled in far enough for the boy to close the door behind it.  It was a great, shaggy bear, taller than the man when it sat up on its haunches beside him.

The tramp looked uneasily around the room for an instant, but seeing no one save the two children, ventured nearer the stove.  The boy followed him, and the bear shuffled along behind them both, limping painfully.  Not a word was said for a moment.  The boys were casting curious glances at the three tramps who had come in as noiselessly as if they had snowed down, and the man was watching the boys with shrewd eyes.  He did not seem to be looking at them, but at the end of his survey he could have described them accurately.  He had noticed every detail of their clothing, from their expensive leather leggins to their fur-lined gloves.  He glanced at Malcolm’s watch-chain and the fine skates which Keith swung back and forth by a strap, and made up his mind, correctly, too, that the pockets of these boys rarely lacked the jingle of money which they could spend as they pleased.

When he turned away to hold his hands out toward the stove, he rubbed them together with satisfaction, for he had discovered more than that.  He knew from their faces that they were trusting little souls, who would believe any story he might tell them, if he appealed to their sympathies in the right way.  He was considering how to begin, when Malcolm broke the silence.

“Is that a trained bear?”

The man nodded.

“What can it do?” was the next question.

“Oh, lots of things,” answered the man, in a low, whining voice.  “Drill like a soldier, and dance, and ride a stick.”  He kept his shifty eyes turning constantly toward the door, as if afraid some one might overhear him.