nge. The few scattered herbs that flourished among the
humped and dangerous pools were solitary in habit, broad of leaf, tall
and succulent of stalk. Not one of them bore any gay or perfumed
blossom, to lure into the swamp the brightness of a butterfly or the
homely humming of wild bees.

The only bird that habitually endured the stillness and the gloom of the
cedar swamp was a shadowy, silent, elusive little nuthatch, which spent
its time slipping up and down the ragged trunks, uttering at wide
intervals its faint, brief note. So furtive a being, and so shy and rare
a voice, only made the silence more impressive, the solitude more
profound.

A great black bulk, moving noiselessly as a shadow hither and thither
among the shadows, seemed the spirit of the swamp made palpable. The
old bear, having learned that certain of the big toadstools growing in
the swamp were very good to eat, had taken to haunting the silence of
the glooms in the season when the fungoids flourished. The solitude and
the stillness suited his morose temper; and for all his seeming
awkwardness he moved as delicately as a cat. His great sharp-clawed feet
seemed shod with velvet, and never a twig snapped under his stealthy
tread. It was not through fear that he went thus softly, for he feared
no creature of the wilderness. But the heavy silence was attuned to his
mood; and besides, he never knew when he might surprise some mouse,
water-rat, or mink that would furnish variety to his toadstool diet.

Such a fortunate surprise, however, could befall him but seldom in the
empty solitude of the swamp. So it happened that, one day when he tired
of the fat, insipid fungoids, his thought turned to the lake, on whose
shores he had sometimes found dead fish. He remembered, with watering
chops, that he had even once or twice been able to catch live fish,
close in shore, by lying in wait for them with exhaustless patience and
scooping them up at last with a lightning sweep of the paw.

[Illustration: "FOR ALL HIS SEEMING AWKWARDNESS HE MOVED AS DELICATELY
AS A CAT."]

Ignoring the toadstools, he turned straight south, and made his way
toward the lake. He travelled swiftly, winding this way and that between
the green, humped roots, the gray trunks, and the black water-pits. But
swiftly as he went, his movement left no trail of sound behind it. A
shadow could not have moved more noiselessly. It was as if the age-old
silence simply seized and folded away for ever