ust before the bear-hunt, he
approached cautiously. This was not a calf, for the habitation of man
had been left far behind. Calves he had made the acquaintance of when
he was the farmhouse pet, in those far-off days. This was a wilderness
creature and it belonged to him if he could kill it, as did all the
wild creatures that he could master.

This is the universal cry of the woods,--food, food, food; and it is
the cry of civilization as well. There is no dingle dell, where the
harebell and the anemone grow, where the pine and the spruce stand
darkling and sweet peace seems to fold her wings and sit brooding, but
danger is there. Danger that crawls and creeps and runs with great
bounds. Danger upon velvety paws, that fall on the mosses of the
forest carpet as lightly as an autumn leaf; danger that slinks in gray
protectively colored forms which pass like shadows; danger upon wings,
as sure and speedy as the hunter's arrow,--wings fringed with down,
that their coming may be noiseless and fatal.

The tiny wood-mouse scampers gleefully in the dead leaves, but above
him and about him are a dozen dangers. The nervous cottontail sits
erect upon his haunches, his nose twitches and his large trumpet-like
ears are turned this way and that to catch the slightest sound. His
whole attitude is one of intense watching and listening, and well he
may, for his enemies are legion and in every thicket, bush and tree-top
a dark danger is lurking.

This is the war of the woods. The old, old story of carnage, life that
takes life that the breath of life may not go out of the nostrils.
Cruel as fate is the law of the woods, but it is also the law of the
shambles and carnivorous man.

Black Bruin was not as well versed in hunting as most of his wild
kindred, so he did not take the precaution to get upon the windward
side of his game. The ever-watchful mother scented danger long before
he got within striking distance. Her white flag went up and she led
her offspring at a breakneck pace from the place, but Black Bruin had
marked them for his own and it was only a matter of patience.

For several days he watched their coming and going, until at last he
discovered where the mother left her offspring while she went to a
distant lake to feed upon lily-pads.

The little dappled deer was hidden under a fallen tree-top and one day,
while the doe was gone, he fell upon the helpless fawn, which,
according to the unwritten law of the for