ter. Instinct, and a spirit of investigation,
soon taught him to find the beetles and grubs that lurked under
stones or in rotting logs,--and in the course of such a search he one
day discovered that ants were good to eat. But the small animals with
which a wild bear is prone to vary his diet were all absent from his
bill of fare. Rabbits, woodchucks, chipmunks, wood-mice, they all kept
out of his sight. His ignorance of the law of silence, the universal
law of the wild, deprived him of many toothsome morsels. As for the
many kinds of fungus which grew upon the mountain, he knew not which
were edible and which poisonous. After an experiment with one
pleasant-smelling red-skinned specimen, which gave him excruciating
cramps, he left the whole race of fungi severely alone.

For perhaps a month he had the solitudes to himself, except for the
big, scornful-looking eagle which always spent a portion of every day
sitting on the top of a blasted pine about a hundred feet above the
den. But, at length, one crisp morning, when he was down by the
lakeside fishing, he found a mate. A young she-bear came out of the
bushes, looked at him, then turned as if to run away,--but didn't. The
exile stopped fishing, and waited civilly to see if the newcomer
wanted to fight. Evidently she had no such desire.

The exile took a few steps up the beach,--which action seemed to
terrify the newcomer almost into flight. Seeing this, he sat down on
his haunches amiably, and waited to see what she would do. What she
did, after much hesitation and delay and half-retreat, was to come up
to his side and sniff trustfully but wonderingly at the great
iron-studded leather collar on his neck. After that the two soon
reached an understanding; and for the next six weeks or so they spent
most of their time together.

Under his mate's instruction, or else by force of her example, the big
bear made some progress in woodcraft, and gained some inklings of the
lesson of silence. He learned, also, to distinguish between the
wholesome and the poisonous fungi. He learned the sweets of a
bee-tree, and how a bear must go to work to attain them. Moving
through the shadows more quietly, he now had glimpses of rabbits and
chipmunks, and even caught sight of a wood-mouse whisking into his
hole under a root. But before he had acquired the cunning to capture
any of these shy kindreds, his mate wandered away, on her own affairs
intent; and he found himself once more alone.