It was early evening on a forest lake. The water lay like a great
mirror, with the sunset splendor still upon it. The hush of twilight
was over the wilderness. Only the hermit-thrushes sang wild and sweet
from a hundred dead spruce tops.

I was drifting about, partly in the hope to meet Mooween, whose tracks
were very numerous at the lower end of the lake, when I heard him
walking in the shallow water. Through the glass I made him out against
the shore, as he plodded along in my direction.

I had long been curious to know how near a bear would come to a man
without discovering him. Here was an opportunity. The wind at sunset
had been in my favor; now there was not the faintest breath stirring.

Hiding the canoe, I sat down in the sand on a little point, where
dense bushes grew down to within a few feet of the water's edge. Head
and shoulders were in plain sight above the water-grass. My intentions
were wholly peaceable, notwithstanding the rifle that lay across my
knees. It was near the mating season, when Mooween's temper is often
dangerous; and one felt much more comfortable with the chill of the
cold iron in his hands.

Mooween came rapidly along the shore meanwhile, evidently anxious to
reach the other end of the lake. In the mating season bears use the
margins of lakes and streams as natural highways. As he drew nearer
and nearer I gazed with a kind of fascination at the big unconscious
brute. He carried his head low, and dropped his feet with a heavy
splash into the shallow water.

At twenty yards he stopped as if struck, with head up and one paw
lifted, sniffing suspiciously. Even then he did not see me, though
only the open shore lay between us. He did not use his eyes at all,
but laid his great head back on his shoulders and sniffed in every
direction, rocking his brown muzzle up and down the while, so as to
take in every atom from the tainted air.

A few slow careful steps forward, and he stopped again, looked
straight into my eyes, then beyond me towards the lake, all the while
sniffing. I was still only part of the shore. Yet he was so near that
I caught the gleam of his eyes, and saw the nostrils swell and the
muzzle twitch nervously.

Another step or two, and he planted his fore feet firmly. The long
hairs began to rise along his spine, and under his wrinkled chops was
a flash of white teeth. Still he had no suspicion of the motionless
object there in the grass. He looked rather out on the lake. Th