'm not going back. I don't know the path as well as
you do. Besides, it will be dark soon, and I should probably break my
neck. It's a shame, Mooween, to put any gentleman in such a fix as I am
in this minute, just by your blundering carelessness. Why didn't you
smell me anyway, as any but a fool bear would have done, and take some
other path over the mountain? Why don't you climb that spruce now and
get out of the way?"

I have noticed that all wild animals grow uneasy at the sound of the
human voice, speaking however quietly. There is in it something deep,
unknown, mysterious beyond all their powers of comprehension; and they
go away from it quickly when they can. I have a theory also that all
animals, wild and domestic, understand more of our mental attitude than
we give them credit for; and the theory gains rather than loses strength
whenever I think of Mooween on that narrow pass. I can see him now,
turning, twisting uneasily, and the half-timid look in his eyes as they
met mine furtively, as if ashamed; and again the low, troubled whine
comes floating up the path and mingles with the rush and murmur of the
salmon pool below.

A bear hates to be outdone quite as much as a fox does. If you catch him
in a trap, he seldom growls or fights or resists, as lynx and otter and
almost all other wild creatures do. He has outwitted you and shown his
superiority so often that he is utterly overwhelmed and crushed when you
find him, at last, helpless and outdone. He seems to forget all his
great strength, all his frightful power of teeth and claws. He just lays
his head down between his paws, turns his eyes aside, and refuses to
look at you or to let you see how ashamed he is. That is what you are
chiefly conscious of, nine times out of ten, when you find a bear or a
fox held fast in your trap; and something of that was certainly in
Mooween's look and actions now, as I sat there in his path enjoying his
confusion.

Near him a spruce tree sprang out of the rocks and reached upward to a
ledge far above. Slowly he raised himself against this, but turned to
look at me again sitting quietly in his own path--that he could no
longer consider his--and smiling at his discomfiture as I remember how
ashamed he is to be outdone. Then an electric shock seemed to hoist him
out of the trail. He shot up the tree in a succession of nervous, jerky
jumps, rising with astonishing speed for so huge a creature, smashing
the little branches, rippi