140 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

revenue, and their hopes for the future
were high, especially when that artillery
should arrive from Boston!

Meantime, the little brown Aztec boy
had done nothing at all. However, when
Friday afternoon came, he _ earnestly
begged, and finally obtained, leave to go
down to his home at Tia Juana. He
wanted very much to see his Mexican
mother and his six little Mexican brothers,
and his sixty, more or less, little Mexican
cousins.

But lo! on Saturday morning, bright and
early, back came the little Bear-Slayer, as
he was called by the boys, and at his heels
came toddling and tumbling not only his
six half-naked little brown brothers, but
dozens of his cousins.

Each carried a bundle on his back. These
bundles were long, finely woven bird-nets,
and these nets were made of the fiber of
the misnamed century plant, the agave.

This queer looking line of barefooted,
bareheaded, diminutive beings, headed by