grosbeak appeared in the doorway. A moment he seemed
to look about curiously over the new, white, beautiful world; then he
hopped to the topmost twig and, turning his crimson breast to the
sunrise, poured out his morning song; no longer muffled, but sweet and
clear as a wood-thrush bell ringing the sunset.

Once, long afterward, I heard his softer love song, and found his nest
in the heart of a New Brunswick forest. Till then it was not known
that he ever built south of Labrador. But even that, and the joy of
discovery, lacked the charm of this rare sweet carol, coming all
unsought and unexpected, as good things do, while our own birds were
spending the Christmas time and singing the sunrise in Florida.

XV. MOOWEEN THE BEAR.

[Illustration]

Ever since nursery times Bruin has been largely a creature of
imagination. He dwells there a ferocious beast, prowling about gloomy
woods, red eyed and dangerous, ready to rush upon the unwary traveler
and eat him on the spot.

Sometimes, indeed, we have seen him out of imagination. There he is a
poor, tired, clumsy creature, footsore and dusty, with a halter round
his neck, and a swarthy foreigner to make his life miserable. At the
word he rises to his hind legs, hunches his shoulders, and lunges
awkwardly round in a circle, while the foreigner sings _Horry, horry,
dum-dum_, and his wife passes the hat.

We children pity the bear, as we watch, and forget the other animal
that frightens us when near the woods at night. But he passes on at
last, with a troop of boys following to the town limits. Next day
Bruin comes back, and lives in imagination as ugly and frightful as
ever.

But Mooween the Bear, as the northern Indians call him, the animal
that lives up in the woods of Maine and Canada, is a very different
kind of creature. He is big and glossy black, with long white teeth
and sharp black claws, like the imagination bear. Unlike him, however,
he is shy and wild, and timid as any rabbit. When you camp in the
wilderness at night, the rabbit will come out of his form in the ferns
to pull at your shoe, or nibble a hole in the salt bag, while you
sleep. He will play twenty pranks under your very eyes. But if you
would see Mooween, you must camp many summers, and tramp many a weary
mile through the big forests before catching a glimpse of him, or
seeing any trace save the deep tracks, like a barefoot boy's, left in
some soft bit of earth in his hurried flight.

Moow