patch, and was stalking the heedless fawn,
whom he knew, by the hearing of his ears, to have become separated from
his watchful mother in the darkness.

I regained the path silently--though Mooween heeds nothing when his game
is afoot--and ran back to the canoe for my rifle. Ordinarily a bear is
timid as a rabbit; but I had never met one so late at night before, and
knew not how he would act should I take his game away. Besides, there
is everything in the feeling with which one approaches an animal. If one
comes timidly, doubtfully, the animal knows it; and if one comes swift,
silent, resolute, with his power gripped tight, and the hammer back, and
a forefinger resting lightly on the trigger guard, the animal knows it
too, you may depend. Anyway, they always act as if they knew; and you
may safely follow the rule that, whatever your feeling is, whether fear
or doubt or confidence, the large and dangerous animals will sense it
instantly and adopt the opposite feeling for their rule of action. That
is the way I have always found it in the wilderness. I met a bear once
on a narrow path--but I must tell about that elsewhere.

The cries had ceased; the woods were all dark and silent when I came
back. I went as swiftly as possible--without heed or caution; for
whatever crackling I made the bear would attribute to the desperate
mother--to the spot where I had turned back. Thence I went on
cautiously, taking my bearings from one great tree on the ridge that
lifted its bulk against the sky; slower and slower, till, just this side
a great windfall, a twig cracked sharply under my foot. It was answered
instantly by a grunt and a jump beyond the windfall--and then the
crashing rush of a bear up the hill, carrying something that caught and
swished loudly on the bushes as it passed, till the sounds vanished in a
faint rustle far away, and the woods were still again.

All night long, from my tent over beyond an arm of the big lake, I heard
the mother calling at intervals. She seemed to be running back and forth
along the ridge, above where the tragedy had occurred. Her nose told her
of the bear and the man; but what awful thing they were doing with her
little one she knew not. Fear and questioning were in the calls that
floated down the ridge and across the water to my little tent.

At daylight I went back to the spot. I found without trouble where the
fawn had fallen; the moss told mutely of his struggle; and a stain or
two showed