was going to sting the bear, and the bear to crack the
man like a nut.

Gerard's heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend's mortal
danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down
his tree in a moment, caught up the crossbow, which he had dropped in
the road, and running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear's body
with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain, and turned
its head irresolutely.

"Keep aloof!" cried Denys, "or you are a dead man."

"I care not;" and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it
fiercely into the bear, screaming, "Take that! take that!"

Denys poured a volley of oaths down at him. "Get away, idiot!"

He was right: the bear finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind
her, slipped growling down the tree, rending deep furrows in it as she
slipped. Gerard ran back to his tree and climbed it swiftly. But while
his legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground, the bear came
rearing and struck with her fore paw, and out flew a piece of bloody
cloth from Gerard's hose. He climbed, and climbed; and presently he
heard as it were in the air a voice say, "Go out on the bough!" He
looked, and there was a long massive branch before him shooting upwards
at a slight angle: he threw his body across it, and by a series of
convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.

Then he looked round panting.

The bear was mounting the tree on the other side. He heard her claws
scrape, and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not
being very quick, she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main
stem. Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him, or
found by scent she was wrong: she paused; presently she caught sight of
him. She eyed him steadily, then quietly descended to the fork.

Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It
was a stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature
this: it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it
came.

Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death
below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible
form. His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless,
fascinated, tongue-tied.

As the fearful monster crawled growling towards him, incongruous
thoughts coursed through his mind. Margaret: the Vulgate, where it
speaks of the rage of a she-bear robbed of her whelps--Rome--Etern