t insipid fruit of an Indian
pear, which for a little assuaged his appetite. Then he rushed
on,--perhaps aimlessly, as far as conscious purpose was concerned,
but, in reality, by a sure instinct, making toward his ancestral
steeps of Sugar Loaf.

All night he travelled; and in the steely chill of dawn he came out
upon a spacious lake. The night had been windless, and now, in the
first of the coming light, the water was smooth like blue-black oil
under innumerable writhing wisps and streamers of mist. A keen smell,
raw but sweet, rose from the wet shores, the wet spruce and fir woods,
and the fringe of a deep cedar swamp near by. The tired animal sniffed
it with an uncomprehending delight. He did not recognize it, yet it
made him feel at home. It seemed a part of what he wanted.

Being thirsty as well as hungry, he pushed through the bushes,--not
noiselessly, as a wild bear moves, but with crashing and tramplings,
as if there were no need of secrecy in the wilds,--and lurched down to
the gravelly brink. Here, as luck would have it, he found a big, dead
sucker lying half-awash, which made him a meal. Then, when sharp
streaks of orange along the eastern horizon were beginning to shed a
mystic colour over the lake, he drew back into the woods and curled
himself up for sleep behind the trunk of a big hemlock.

When the sun was about an hour high he awoke, and made haste to
continue his journey. Along the lake shore he went, to the outlet;
then down the clear, rushing Squatook; and in the afternoon he came
out upon a smaller lake, over which stood sentinel a lofty, beetling
mountain. At the foot of the mountain, almost seeming to duplicate it
in miniature, a steep island of rock rose sharply from the water.

The bear halted on the shore, sniffed wistfully, and looked up at the
lonely mountain. Dim memories, or emotions too dim to be classed as
memories, began to stir in the recesses of his brain. He hurried
around the lake and began to climb the steeps. The lonely mountain was
old Sugar Loaf. The exile had come home.

It was his feet, rather than his head, perhaps, that knew the way so
well. Upward he toiled, through swamps and fir woods, over blueberry
barrens and ranges of granite boulders, till, looking down, he saw the
eagle flying far below him. He saw a vast, empty forest land, beaded
with shining lakes,--and a picture, long covered up in his brain, came
back to him. These were the great spaces that so long ago had